


Her Royal Highness (H.R.H.)

by missclairebelle



Series: miss clairebelle imagine prompts [3]
Category: Outlander (TV), Outlander Series - Diana Gabaldon
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Royalty, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-02
Updated: 2019-06-04
Packaged: 2019-07-05 23:37:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 18
Words: 52,605
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15874038
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/missclairebelle/pseuds/missclairebelle
Summary: A queen and the manager of her stables collide, sending everything they know into disarray.





	1. Part I: The Crown Equerry

**Author's Note:**

> Based on an Imagine prompt from just after the royal wedding:  
>  _I just watched the royal wedding and imagine a jamie and claire royal wedding au!! ❤_

##  **Her Royal Highness (H.R.H.)**

##  **_Part I: The Crown Equerry_ **

**_July 1951_ **

Jamie Fraser did all of his paperwork at night.  The quietness of his office in the stables was a welcome respite from the hubbub that defined most weekdays in his role as the Crown Equerry.  Incidentally, he also did all of his best thinking after nightfall, too.

In the humidity of the stables, something about nine o’clock just  _felt_ different –– it was the kind of peace he had yearned for during the war.  

The summer sounds of the city disappeared after nightfall and all that was left was the chattering symphony of various white noises layered atop one another. ( _The permanently dripping spigot, the snuffling breaths of his slumbering wards, the buzz of electricity emanating from the warm lights suspended in the rafters, the patter of intermittent rain, and the sleepy drone of crickets in the yard._ )

Even the smells were welcome to him, letting him be clear on where he was. ( _The earthy pungency of alfalfa, the mild and inoffensive tang of manure, the slick-bodied smell of animals that work, the fresh-cut lawn that sprawled out around the stables, the floral lilt on the air rolling through from the palace’s well-maintained gardens_.)

All of this was in contrast to a few years earlier ––  _the_   _war_ ,  _a prison camp_ ,  _nothing but despair and time (or lack the thereof) staring him down_. These were  _facts_  in his history. He tried his damnedest not to think of any of them. 

When the bullets and mortars and planes and helicopters went silent in 1945, and the gates to the hell hole where he was imprisoned opened, he was changed. 

There was a difference between  _forgetting_  and  _not thinking about it_. The latter was his goal.  Nearly six years later he was succeeding in this goal a little more each day.

As one of the men lucky enough to make his way back after the war, he was home first.   _Scotland_  –– the place he dreamed about and yearned for over years of war.  Scots were optimistic, ready to create a new place for Scotland in the tapestry of Britain. It faded quickly –– an economic backslide that made post-war Scotland a bleak place.

That is how, on a call from a friend from the army, Jamie found himself quite unexpectedly in London working for the Crown Equerry. 

_“A job is a job_ ,” Jenny had told him, watching him pack his belongings in two leather suitcases and a single cardboard box.  It was all he wanted to take along. She sounded like she was trying to convince herself as much as she was trying to convince him.  

He kissed his sister, his best friend, and the five-month-old nephew who bore his name, and left Lallybroch, the only home he had ever known, for London.

In his new role, Jamie proved himself reliable, capable, and dedicated, no matter the menial task assigned. 

For a time he was a groom and then he became a chief steward and then shortly thereafter a superintendent. Then, eventually, he was at the top –– the operational head of the most prized stable of horses and most important fleet of vehicles in the Europe.  

When his predecessor had commented that the head job was  _difficult_  (“ _lots of personalities to manage; you’ll come to understand_ ”), Jamie had kept his skepticism tightly under wraps.  It had taken him years to work his way up to the position of Crown Equerry. At times it had been back-breaking work, to be sure, but it was the kind of labor felt good at night as he melted into the covers. 

Categorizing the job “ _difficult”_ was something only possible by someone who had never set foot in a trench of scared, half-trained boys with machine guns strapped to their backs and grenades to their belts.

After only three weeks, Jamie had concluded that his new position was  _easy. (Save the personnel management duties that he found unspeakably distasteful and that he more often than not elected to delegate to the Superintendent of the Royal Mews_.)

Sure, the paperwork and bureaucracy of it all were drudgery at times, but he spent much of his time surrounded by something that gave him comfort.  

_Horses_.  

He had come from something much different –– years in a trench, grease, death, hopelessness, dead boys, the threat occupation.

The mere luxury of just  _sitting_  and  _listening_ without blood-curdling fear was not yet lost on him.

Relatively speaking, this was easy.

No one would ever convince him otherwise.

It was a hot, uncharacteristically muggy Thursday night.  He had put out fires throughout the day and was behind on paperwork.  It had been well after sundown before he had even managed to look at his watch.  Reaching into his desk drawer, he took out the meal he had forgotten to eat hours earlier. The paperwork could wait a little bit longer.  

Apples, carrots, a handful of raisins.

Glancing only briefly at his watch, and with only the promise of an empty flat and a narrow bed, he set about checking on his dependents.  The lot of them –– twenty Windsor Greys, ten Cleveland Bays, and a pair each of Friesians and Arabians –– were mostly sleeping. 

Save his Donas –– a spirited Arabian with a black coat that never bleached in the sun.  It was as if the horse was waiting for him. Jamie had come to care for each of his charges; he knew their ticks, their markings, the areas in which they required additional training, and the things that made them individuals.  

However, if pressed, Jamie would admit that Donas was his favorite.  

It had taken much of the first four years of Jamie’s career in the service of the Crown to break the beast.  Huge, evil-tempered and nearly unmanageable by others, Donas had taken to Jamie.  Jamie could remember the moment the horse broke –– wide brown eyes connecting and a mutual recognition that there was simply no point to battling further.  Both master and horse were headstrong and stubborn, and there was little to be gained in further protestations.  

Then, little by little, they connected.

Jamie clicked his tongue gently and the horse ambled to the front of the stall.  Extending a hand, a large slice of apple as an offering, Jamie smiled and whispered “ _mo maise_.”  Donas took the apple and chewed thoughtfully for a moment before swallowing the piece nearly whole.

‘ _No_ ,’ Jamie thought as Donas pushed his soft muzzle into Jamie’s hand, greedily searched for another bite of apple. ‘ _This was not a difficult job_.’

Jamie laughed at the exasperated sound the horse let out when he realized there was no more to be had.

The moment was interrupted by the hollow echo of boots on the ground and the groaning leather of a saddle being lifted from its resting spot.  When Jamie turned, a round, pert and decidedly female arse was bent over one of the gates. Whoever belonged to that arse was going for  _Brimstone_  –– perhaps the gentlest, sweetest horse in the entire barn, despite her somewhat ominous name.

“Excuse me, ma’am.”

_Nothing_. Not even a twitch of acknowledgment in the woman’s posture indicated that she either heard or cared that he was calling out to her.

Jamie wiped his hands on his pants and strode towards Brimstone’s stall.  “Can I help ye?”  

He heard only a muttered “ _oh fuck off_ ” and rolled his eyes.  

It seemed like an odd place for a trespasser, if he was honest, but he ignored the thought.  It was getting late and the last thing he needed was a royal inquisition ( _literally_ ) into some interloper in the stables.  For a moment he felt a zip of wonder that someone had made it up over the wall surrounding the palace grounds and made it all the way to the stables without being detected.  Despite his wonder, he had no doubt that he could subdue this slight woman.

Reaching out, he took the woman’s upper arm. When she turned, Jamie nearly fell backwards. 

_The Queen_.

A scowl of indescribable annoyance contorted her usually soft features. The sour facial expression did not take away from the fact that, even undone, she was incredibly striking in person.

“Am I not allowed to come to my own stables to take one of my own horses for a ride, Colonel Fraser?”

He looked at his hand wrapped around her small arm and immediately released his grip, stepping back.  “Your majesty, I didna… I… wasna expectin’––”

_Oh Christ he had just laid hands on the Queen._

“Well of course you would not have expected me.  I do not make appointments for late-night rides.  I just need to clear my head, Colonel Fraser.”

Suddenly he was shaken by the fact that she knew his name.  _Of course she knew his name. Rumor had it that she ran a tight ship and knew **everything**  that happened on her grounds._

“This is Brimstone, your majesty.”

_Your majesty_  –– was that right?  _Oh God_.  The job felt  _much_  larger than it had moments before when he was blissfully ignorant, hand feeding his dinner to Donas.

With a quick shake of her head, inky curls spilling back into waiting hands, she sighed.  “I know very well that she is called Brimstone, Colonel Fraser.  I named her, after all.  She was a gift from Lamb…”

This time her words trailed off and she cinched her eyes shut, tying back the riotous flurry of curls with an elastic band.  

Jamie swallowed hard as the Queen popped one hip out and bumped the gate. It swung open easily.  The gate was one that always stuck, despite generous applications of oil and the maintenance staff’s frequent fiddling with the latch.  She was well practiced with getting this open, apparently.

He was not expecting her to speak again, but she took up again. “The King gifted him to me when I turned fifteen.  Brimstone and I… well, we have more or less grown up together.”

“I beg yer pardon, your royal highness––”

––   _was that right? how had his predecessor said to address the Queen? ––_

“I dinna mean any offense.”

She sighed again, brushing an errant curl from her forehead as she rose up onto her toes.  She threaded one of the more utilitarian training bridles over Brimstone’s head.  He watched, slack-jawed, as she adjusted the headpiece behind Brimstone’s velvety ears. When finished, she gave the horse a gentle scratch.  In a voice barely above a whisper, she said something to the horse that Jamie could not hear.

“I am going to take her for a few laps of the grounds.  It is late and you should be getting to your home.  You do not need to wait for me, Colonel Fraser.”  

She tugged the strap holding the saddle snug and slipped fingers beneath it to ensure that it was not too tight.  

“I am fully capable of getting her back and situated for the night.”

It felt like a dismissal, but something about letting the Queen go trotting off on the property felt  _wrong_  to him.  Even though it was  _her_ property and  _her_  horse and  _he_  was in her employ.

“I’d be much more comfortable if ye’d allow me to accompany ye, yer royal highness.”

She turned and gave him a look that he was sure leveled men on the regular –– eyes a piercing amber color ( _not_  the hazel they appeared in photographs), full lips in a taut and unbreakable line, pink brushed along the very tops of her cheeks.

“I do not require a babysitter, Colonel Fraser.  I am a twenty-seven-year-old woman.” 

Jamie heard the heel of her riding boot grinding into the hay-covered floor.  He tamped down his inclination to comment that she was like a bull ready to charge before he could smile at the thought.  

It sounded almost like an afterthought when she added, “And I am the bloody Queen of England.”

“Aye, weel… that ye are, I ‘spose.”  Something about the mix of her tone on the last and the uncharacteristically hot London summer evening made him unguarded, too casual and light in his speech. “It’s a bonny night for a trot about the property, yer highness.  I can hang back on Donas and ye’ll never even ken I’m wi’ ye, yer maj––”

She rolled her eyes and held up a hand as she tossed a saddle pad over Brimstone’s back.  Adjusting the pad, she gave Jamie a look that rivaled the one Donas gave him when he finally quit fighting. He bit down on his cheek to keep from smiling.  

“If you are going to accompany me, then I insist that you quit with this ‘your majesty’ and ‘your royal highness’ business.”

Jamie offered a stiff nod, squaring his shoulders.

“It would be a fair assumption that as the master of my stables you are well acquainted enough with saddling a horse that you will be quick about it.” 

It was a statement, not a question.  

Before he could respond, she widened her eyes and flicked her wrist. “You should probably saddle up your chosen steed. I will not object to you following me at some distance, but I will not be kept waiting by you, Colonel Fraser.”

He almost tripped over his feet as he turned and jogged the length of the barn back to Donas’ stall.  He had the horse saddled and ready just as the Queen exited her own stall, leading Brimstone with a quiet murmur. She rose into the saddle easily and arranged herself in the easy posture of someone who had ridden horses often, early, and with expensive tutelage.

“You may call me by my name when we ride. If we happen to meet in public, I will insist that you maintain the level of formality expected of staff of the Crown.  Are we clear, Colonel Fraser?”

He felt like he was being given license for his earlier casualness, and responded, “Crystal, your majesty.”

A short huff of breath and another roll of her eyes, and she clicked her tongue, urging Brimstone to turn to the exit.  “Claire.  My name is neither Crystal nor ‘your majesty’ when we ride. Just… Claire.” 

She paused for a beat.  

And it almost sounded like she was asking for a favor when she said over her shoulder, adding, “Please.”

“Jamie,” he called after her, giving Donas a gentle, encouraging nudge with the heels of his boots. “I am Jamie.”


	2. Part II: An Accidental Queen

##  **_Part II: An Accidental Queen_ **

It was the first time she had indulged herself in this habit since her coronation.  Before the coronation, when things were  _not normal but still **her**  normal_, she rode alone with some regularity.  Living  _here_ with her Uncle Lamb escaping for an evening ride had been tricky, but it had been far from impossible.

Lamb was wholly committed to looking the other way. An unspoken agreement meant the house staff did the same, making the sight of Princess Claire slipping out of the palace in riding boots well after dark a not unfamiliar sight.  Clad in riding boots well after dark, hair bound in a tight bun at the nape of her neck, she would spirit away down the rolling, manicured lawns of the palace to the stables.  After dark, they were quiet and empty.  

The ritual was almost a religious experience to her –– the quiet whispered greeting to her horse, saddling her, riding her, cooling her down, and getting her back into the stable and settled for the night.

But since Claire’s coronation, the unspoken agreement had been more or less disregarded and she had been confined to the palace at night.  Surrounded by priceless treasures of an empire caught in a permanent ebb and flow of influence and importance, the walls of the palace and its hundreds of rooms were stifling.  Though thoroughly aware of her privilege, she had come to think of it as a gilded cage.

HRH Princess Claire Elizabeth of York had never been the odds on favorite to become the Queen.  She came upon her role rather accidentally.  

Her Uncle Lamb’s coronation was well before she was born and long before he had been ready ( _he said_ ).  He had been young –  _barely twenty_  –– when his mother passed away from cancer.  At the time, everyone ( _press, public, family_ ) had just  _assumed_  that the young king would someday marry. It was not for a lack of trying –– an impersonal royal matchmaking through diplomacy and whispered observations of “ _oh well she’s very pretty_ ” met only with laughs and smirks.And with the assumption of  _marriage_  came the corollary assumption that Lamb would have children.  He would fulfill that which was chief among his royal duties: have children.  Then from that lineage would come the next king or queen.

Claire had never bothered herself with such assumptions or the point when the failure for him to abide by them became a talking point.  To her, she was just Uncle Lamb.

He was hardly a king at all in her eyes, though she knew the formalities to be observed in the public eye.  Behind closed doors, he had just been her goofy uncle who gave generously at Christmases and birthdays, told silly jokes with bad punchlines, traveled a lot for work, and showed up on the television periodically, looking somber and talking about pride in country.  

But then there was the accident that tore away nearly everything that she knew.  

Claire, at six, had not known that the world could change in a moment. At least until one cold afternoon.  She was asleep between her mother ( _Her Royal Highness Princess Julia Louise, heir presumptive to the throne)_  and father in the back seat of a state car.  Her older sister ( _Her Royal Highness Princess Anne Catherine_ ) was pressed between her mother and the car door, also slumbering. And then a bridge fell out from beneath their motorcade, well above a snowy creek.

She always found it funny that something so profoundly disruptive could exist as only a distant, fragmented memory.  When trying to recall it ( _something she rarely did_ ), she was bombarded with only a series of disjointed recollections –– full technicolor and visceral.  

The ice cold water burning her throat when she gulped for air.

The screams of her mother (“ _Henry –– the girls… save them_ ”) that made her eardrums ache.

The rough hands on her arms, wrenching her away from her father, out of the water, and onto grass.  

The scratch of a tartan blanket over her as she shivered violently, her teeth feeling as though they would grind themselves into dust.

The sterile bite of hospital air and the soft, winter-chapped lips of the nurse who stood over her, whispering “ _you’re alive, love, you’re alive_.”

The searing ache when she tried  _not_  to be alive any longer ––­­­­­­ violent compressions on her narrow chest that shifted her bones.  

The doctor who smelled faintly of cigarettes imploring her to “ _breathe god dammit_.”

_Darkness. Cold. Emptiness._

She woke to her uncle’s broad thumb drawing small circles on her shoulder through a stiff green hospital gown.  Being part of the royal family did not save her the indignity of a tie-back hospital gown.  She was emotionless as her eyes darted around the sterile room ( _tubes in her hand, Lamb’s warm touch, the hum of a fluorescent overhead light, the smell of cleaning fluid and layers of illness_ ).

But then the realization hit her.  Her Uncle Lamb had no reason to be here, here except….

And although she was young, she knew immediately that they were gone forever.

Her mother ( _Julia_ ).  Her older sister ( _Anne_ ).  Her father ( _Henry_ ).

 _Dead_.

Those memories, while technicolor and visceral, were not what she remembered best.  More vivid than that tumble into the creek was the moment when Lamb told her that her entire world had vanished.

She moved into Buckingham Palace and goofy Uncle Lamb awkwardly transitioned into a father-like figure.  She went to boarding school, kicking and screaming, crying every time she left to anyone who would listen.  It was only when she was caught smoking cigarettes in the girl’s lavatory that Lamb brought her back to London for good.  It had been Christmas. His disappointed eyes glared at her over half-moon spectacles when he said, “You need to manage your reputation.  Your future rides on it.”

At the time she had not grasped what he meant. But then, shortly after she turned fifteen, media chatter started that the King was a “confirmed bachelor.”  Claire guessed what it meant.  Nonetheless, Lamb sat her down, brushed the back of his hand over her cheeks, and explained the concept of a euphemism ( _something she already knew_ ).  He told her that he was not romantically interested in women ( _something else she already knew_ ).

Then came the interview.

“ _Will we see the king marry?_ ” the doe-eyed reporter had asked, a finger nervously twisting at the cap on his pen.

With a laugh, Lamb’s response had been short: “ _I would not count on it_.”

It was only then that the chatter about  _Claire_ started. She was no longer just the unfortunate child of a dead royal.  The lanky, awkward little thing ––  _an orphan_ –– was not  _really_  a placeholder heir presumptive. The King would not have children.  She was  _it_.

And then he died.  Quietly, unexpectedly, warm in his bed. A heart attack took him well before his time.

The newspaper headlines were none too flattering when Princess Claire Elizabeth – who had been the third in line to the throne – was thrust into her new role.

Chief among the headlines:  _The Accidental Queen._

Photographs of her from the boarding school materialized, no doubt from the stash of an unidentified, so-called friend. Cigarette dangling from her lip and skirt rolled at the waist to be shorter, every paper published it with the label:  _The Party Queen_.

Reading it, Claire had thrown a vase against the door and screamed.  No one came to see what was the matter.  After a full meltdown in the bathroom, she exited wrapped in one of her mother’s robes to see that the face had been swept up and the flowers put into an identical cut crystal vase.

She was suddenly stuck on the thought that both vases ( _the broken and the unbroken_ ) were hers, but neither truly  _belonged_  to her.

“We will take care of it ma’am,” was the official line given to her as she prepared for her coronation.  The newspapers became notably more generous in their coverage after that.

Galling as the unflattering press had been, she threw herself into the work of a queen with a certain abandon. Her dedication gnawed her other dreams, things she had only been allowed to dream as one with a laughably distant claim to the throne, clean from her bones.

The day she broke –– running down the hill, tear-streaked and needing a release –– had been a long and her every move choreographed by others.  

She had awoken to the sound of bagpipes and immediately forgotten whatever dream she had been having.  The only shadow of it was the warmth of a touch on her cheek, the sensation of wide-open space, and sky as far as the eye could see.  Then that too dissolved.

She bathed, perfumed herself, sat staring as her hair and makeup were fixed and clothes laid out for her to dress.

Then it was on to responding to a small selection of letters from the public ( _adoration, condolences, the sharing of personal struggles_ ), the red box ( _telegrams and state papers for her review and approval_ ), and a series of meetings ( _the identities and positions of each visitor whispered into her ear along with a brief explanation of the meeting’s purpose_ ).

A lunch with the Argentine ambassador ( _sea bass and vegetables, a glass of wine_ ) and then preparing for an engagement with the Prime Minister of Canada ( _a tiara pinned into an updo that straightened her curls and did not move, red lips, a billowing ivory dress, and elbow-length gloves_ ).  

And finally, a brief telephone call with  _Frank_  –– the war hero introduced to her by Lamb and who she was to marry come autumn.  Frank was “ _just fine_ ,” he said and when they hung up there was no proclamation of “I miss you” or love.  “ _Just fine_ ” was how she felt about the match.

Scrubbing the day from her skin in a too-hot shower, she was struck by the fact that she had not made a single choice in the preceding forty-eight hours.  Save how she wanted her morning eggs, she had little say in much of the last week.  She had not even applied the red lipstick smeared across her palm or mascara running in black rivulets down her cheeks and over her neck.

Everything in her day had been  _cursory_.At the end of it all, she found herself yearning for  _depth_  with an ache so acute it felt as though it would split her breastbone clean in two.  

Thoroughly exhausted, but thrumming with need for a piece of  _herself_ , Claire finished her shower, toweled off, and took off down a back stairway that she had never before taken. Clad in black clothes fit for a caper in the night and with damp, unbrushed hair, she made her way to the stables.

And there, like a breath of fresh air, she stood –– her beautiful girl.  Long lines, sweet disposition, and an eagerness to please.  It gave Claire a jolt of emotion. Through absence, she felt that she had neglected the poor creature.  However, Brimstone’s ears flattened as Claire smiled and clicked her tongue softly, leaning over the stall gate.  All was forgiven.

“There you are, you good girl.”  She sighed as the horse nudged her hand.  “I have missed you, my beautiful love.”

Just as she moved to pop a hip against the gate –– the only way to get the blasted thing to open without a screwdriver –– she had been interrupted.

“ _Can I help ye?_ ” the voice called to her.

“ _Oh fuck off_ ,” Claire muttered, brows furrowing.  She had made it this far and to be taken from her plans by a  _groom_.  Well, the thought was enough to make her see red.

Warm, broad hands took her by the upper arm and she turned, her face contorting.  He was a hulking thing of a man with broad shoulders. His collar unbuttoned and shirtsleeves rolled to the elbows, she could tell that he had an immense amount of power hiding beneath the clean lines of his work shirt.  He stood dumbfounded, staring at her for more than a few moments before releasing her.  He had fiery crop of hair.  It looked mussed by a hand, a tick used to distract a mind deep in thought.

For a moment, she bantered with him about  _her_ stables,  _her_  horses,  _her_  desire to take Brimstone out. She still hated having  _staff_.  And then, her mind fuzzy from champagne cocktails and too little food, she had given in, said to call her “Claire,” and agreed he could follow her.  She mentally kicked herself.  Had she really told the man to call her by her given name? Had she really relented that easily?

With the matter of her taking the horse out settled, Colonel James Fraser set to ride behind her at an appropriate distance, she climbed onto Brimstone, muttering only to herself, “You are losing it, Claire.”

He proved himself an unobtrusive riding companion –– hanging back an intentional distance and allowing her to put some space between them.  Her initial disappointment of not being able to take Brimstone out alone faded incrementally and she found her mind drifting to the past, a place she had found herself dwelling quite frequently of late.  

Years of riding Brimstone.  

Lamb’s insistence that he give her the horse outside of others’ presence, his cool fingers resting lightly over her eyes as he beseeched her to “ _keep them closed, just a bit more then, squirt_.”  The feeling when she opened them and saw the horse.  _Hers_.

The gilded horse-drawn carriage kept just kitty corner to where she had saddled Brimstone.  An ornate monstrosity of riches that had carried her from the palace to Westminster Abbey for her coronation, her heart aching with the loss of her uncle and her gut churning at the thought of her new role.

 _The accidental queen_ , indeed.

Eventually she as almost able to forget that Fraser was following her.  

 _Almost_.

They made it a fair distance before she brought Brimstone back towards the stables.  Her hands carried her through the routine of readying Brimstone to be put back in her stall.

Fraser interrupted her.  The damn bloody Scot.

“She likes ye.”  He was closer than she had thought.  Lifting Brimstone’s saddle off, she sighed at the heft of it. The back of his hand brushed over her knuckles when he took it from her.  

She stepped around to the front of her horse.

“Well, I would hope so.”  Claire’s eyes drifted shut for a moment as she reveled in the soft nudge of Brimstone’s nose against her neck.  “I did all of the work with her.  Did you know that?”

“I didna know that, ma’am.”  

Fraser was apparently wise enough to have not taken her earlier bait.  

Something in her, though, wanted him to say her name.  _Just to hear it_.To lend even a moment’s more normalcy to the evening before she had to tromp back up the hill and into her gilded cage.

They worked in tandem to finish untacking and grooming Brimstone.  The silence was companionable and she smiled at him when he passed her a curry comb. The fact that he did not offer to just do the work himself struck her.  And she was deeply appreciative.

Brimstone watered, cleaned, and tucked in for the night with a handful of apple slices and a kiss to the nose, Claire turned to leave, wiping at the sheen of sweat that had sprung up on the back of her neck.

“Your majesty?” Fraser called after her, his voice firm and somehow tentative all at once.

She turned on her heel and continued to walk backwards.  “Yes, Colonel Fraser?”

“Ye’re a fine rider.”

She offered him a quick smile before turning and continuing back to the palace.  Although she was returning to her gilded cage, it somehow felt as though she had opened a door.


	3. Part III: Just Claire

##  **_Part III: Just Claire_ **

Over the next few weeks, Claire found a new normal by retaking an old part of her.  

She rode Brimstone after nightfall accompanied only by her thoughts, the cacophony of nocturnal insects, and the distant shadow of Colonel James Fraser. Without fail, Fraser mounted the same giant Arabian, his plain favorite in the entire stable.  

And together they canvased the palace grounds, coordinated yet exchanging words only rarely.

It was not without some great psychic difficulty that Claire turned to Fraser one night.  

At first, it was a mere glance over a shoulder to gauge their separation in space.

But then the moment morphed into a quiet plea for some sort of companionship.  

He was riding with one hand wrapped by the well-worn black leather reins and the other on his hip, looking off into the distance. It was like he was in another world entirely and something about that far off look on his handsome face made her curious.  

Curiosity was something she had longed for in her gilded cage.  

And he was a riddle to be solved.

For a few moments she battled the inclination to call to him, trying to focus on Brimstone’s even  _clop clop clop_  and heavy snuffles. Claire tried to redirect her eyes and mind to the small path that was starting to wear in the wooded area near the edge of the palace grounds.  

It was the same path they had taken over the course of a few nights, the vegetation worn down by the plodding rhythm of their horses.  

In a distant, detached kind of way, she realized that the grounds and maintenance staff would take notice of the disruption.  Likely very soon.

“Don’t do it,” she muttered to herself, gritting her teeth. 

Engaging with Fraser with the riding was enough of a challenge to her status quo. Taking their tentative connection a step further ( _something personal_ ) felt like opening Pandora’s box. She had no clue what would spill out. At the same time, though, she yearned for an unregulated interaction. A  _secret_ , something that was not screened and packaged for her thoughtless consumption. 

“Don’t you do it.”

Despite her best efforts, she faltered in her attempts to be mindful only of the quiet path she was creating, the moment with her horse.

“Colonel Fraser,” she called over her shoulder. Her voice was firm, not betraying the war waging inside of her. Immediately, she kicked herself, knowing that she called to him only against her better judgment and all reason.  “Come keep me company.”

Fraser did not require a second request and clicked his tongue, tapping his heels into Donas’s side to ride up next to her.

“Is there something the matter, ma’am?” he asked, his voice as thick and muggy as the humid July air.  

“No.” 

Inside, her mind was screaming “ _yes, yes, everything_.”  

It was the first time in days she had someone to speak to whose name was not printed on her daily agenda, a pre-allocated time limit for a pre-ordained topic designated in black and white.

She had not expected to feel the urge to  _explain_ herself in calling him up. But she did feel it –– the desire to speak her loneliness into the world, to have someone recognize that she was suffocating.  

She fiercely bit down on the urge, leaving a crown of teeth marks in the tender flesh of her cheek.  

The moment she released it the metallic pulse of blood flooded her tongue and the words just fell from her: “You have ridden with me a dozen times and I would like to know more about you.”

When he offered only a raised eyebrow and a flat “ _ma’am_ ” in response, she pushed on.  

“You run my stables, and by all appearances do a fine job of it.”

“I’m flattered that ye think so. Though, the staff does most of the work, if I’m honest.”

Humming under her breath, Claire turned to study Fraser’s profile for only a moment before turning back to the path ahead of them.

She had a knack for faces, memorizing them, studying them –– strong nose, full mouth, chiseled jaw, clear eyes framed with thick and startlingly inky black lashes. 

He was closed to her, an enigma either by nature or training.

“Tell me about the man who accompanies me on these clandestine rides.”

“He’s just yer servant, ma’am.”  There was a touch of humor in his voice.  It masked a deliberate evasiveness.  _Training, then_.

“Oh, stop it,” Claire huffed as they came to a stop, rolling her eyes. It was a startlingly unroyal sound and Fraser shifted in his saddle a little.  He was not ill at ease with her, but he did find himself a touch amused by her sudden interest.  

Claire easily slid out of the saddle.  Fraser followed suit, throwing one thick thigh over the saddle.  He effortlessly landed on his feet.

“Ye’re no’ used to hearin’ ‘no’ are ye?” he asked, running a hand down Donas’s neck and reaching deep into his pants pocket.

“No,” she admitted, raising her eyebrows.  

He raised his own in response, extending a fist and opening it finger by finger.  Resting on the middle of his palm were four fat carrot sticks.  With the barest hint of a smile touching her lips, Claire took them and held the treat up to Brimstone’s soft lips.

This time Fraser made a noise –– a vague, throaty sound originating deep in his chest.

Claire could tell the sound he made was borne partly from amusement and partly from  _something else_. She found herself wondering what that something else was, questioning whether she could riddle it out of him.

_She was the Queen.  She did not hear “no.”  But that wasn’t why he spoke._

“Well, I guess I’ll no’ be the one to buck the trend.” His tone and attitude would have tempted a rebuke at any other time or in any other circumstance. “So, tell me… what would yer majesty like to know?”

In the darkness, surrounded by the sounds of summertime and out of the gilded cage, she could not bring herself to comment on his delivery. Instead, she pressed on. “Tell me how you ended up in service of the Crown.”

At this, Fraser was unable to stifle a sharp laugh.  

It was readily apparent to her that the sound was not a  _real_  laugh.  It was a sardonic, scoffing bark likely reserved for questions with particularly distasteful answers.

“Well, ma’am, I’ve been in the service of one part of government or another since I turned eighteen. It was a natural transition from military service to working in service of the Crown.”

There was only one way Fraser could have ended up in public service at eighteen and the thought sickened her.

Nothing more than a boy in a trench or on a plane, riding through decimated foreign countryside by tank or carried through it on foot.

_The war. That humorless laugh. The fixation of his eyes on the horizon. The face trained to give nothing away._

Fraser squared his posture and then, there was that look again. A distance, stormy eyes on some point in the near distance.  

Claire had seen the shells of those eighteen year olds – the ones who went off to a war.  Some were prone and still in boxes draped with a flag. Still others were ghouls on London’s streets with eyes that were at once blank and filled with unspeakable things. Others she never saw.

The limits of the landscape drew his eyes further and further away ( _from the here, the now, from her_ ). Seeing this, Claire settled on not inquiring further. Instead, she just blandly asked, “War to horses?”

“War to horses,” he confirmed, turning his attention from an unknown pinpoint on the horizon and catching her eye. “This is a good fit for me, ma’am.”

She hummed a little, tilting her head as she held his gaze.

Everything about the man spoke of a grit she was quite sure she had never before encountered.

It was in the breadth of his shoulders, the fathomless depth of those startlingly blue eyes, the effortlessness as he easily dismounted from a horse, and the apparent and somehow reserved power in his hands. 

It breathed from the hint of stubble ghosting over his jawline, down his Adam’s apple, and nestled at the bow of his upper lip.

“Now, you tell me.”

Her inspection interrupted, she furrowed a brow.  “Excuse me?”

“Who are  _you_?”

For some reason, she now felt inclined to  _apologize_ for asking for clarification.  He was looking at her so intently, evidently engaging in his own study of her.  She could hardly fault him. She had called him up to ride beside her and then fallen almost completely silent while she studied him.

“What do you mean?”

“Everything I ken of ye is from the papers, the radio.  And even though we’ve spent the better part of this past month riding together, I dinna ken much of ye. Other than the official line.”

She offered him a light, little chuckle.  It was her political laugh, the laugh of a woman groomed for pageantry and diplomacy, but ultimately little power.

 _Humorless. Tight. Cloaking something unspoken and only recently entombed_.

Despite the laugh, she yearned for him to say her name. Just to hear it in that accent from that smart mouth.

Jamie was taken by the urge to see her unbound a little, to see the carefully-crafted façade crumble a little.  Her hair was loose and damp from a shower and she had a bit of hay dust on her black shirt, but  _that_  was not what he wanted.  

He wanted to know the sound of her laugh when she was unguarded. So he persisted.  

“I ken ye’re the  _queen_ , but who are you?”

She stayed silent, stunned a bit both by his forwardness and her desire to find an answer that would satisfy him.

“I’m just… Claire.”  

The answer stood in for a withering look, an admission that she did not have a bloody clue of who she was anymore.  

And the answer was not true.  

The parts of her that were “just Claire” had slid away from her on the seemingly endless carriage ride to her coronation before Lamb was even warm in the ground.

With that ride, had come the recognition that she may never  _truly_ let someone know her again.  The realization of it yet again with the summer-warm grass underfoot, felt like it was wrapping around her throat.

“Plain… Claire.”

He made a noise, the one she referred to in her head as a  _Scottish noise_ , before he said, “Well I dinna believe that for just one second. Do ye no’ ken who ye are then? Ye canna be just the queen.”

The question snapped against her skin, startling her back to reality and leaving a purple reminder not to transgress the boundaries of her new self. The sensation brought her out of the spell he had put on her. She pulled herself back up onto Brimstone’s back, slipping her feet carefully in the stirrups.

“ _That_  is rather bold, Colonel Fraser. You would be wise to watch your words.”  

“Weel, then ye can terminate my employment, yer majesty.”

The tone had shifted, and she could not bring herself to respond.  

She gave him a final look before trotting ahead.  

She reached the stable just before him.  

For the first evening in a few, their eyes did not connect as she readied Brimstone to go back into her stall.  

Walking back up the hill to the palace and sneaking in, she replayed Fraser’s statement over and over in her head.

The unabashed boldness of the question.  

The fact that she wanted to answer him.  

The realization that she had no idea how to answer him.


	4. Part IV: Foal

##  **_Part_** ** _IV_** ** _:_** ** _Foal_**

On the trek back to the palace after she had stormed out on Fraser, Claire felt her heart hammering a thunderous rebuke in her chest.  

She replayed his words over and over again:  _Do ye no’ ken who ye are then? Ye canna be just the queen._

Her head mocked his accent, the bravado and confidence of his voice when he asked the question and made the statement. At the same time, her head mocked  _her_ , urging her to come up with something ( _anything_ ) that would serve as evidence that she knew, with any certainty, who she was.

“What was he thinking?” she muttered, fists balled at her side and fingernails carving crescent moons into the flesh of her palm. 

The next night, Claire was resolute in her stubbornness.  

Defying the urge to go for a night ride, she stood at her window and glared down at the stable. Her mind was ablaze with all manner of condemnations. ( _How dare he? He doesn’t know the half of it. Bloody presumptuous Scot._ )  She finger-combed her shower-damp hair and worked it into a loose braid.  The distant amber glow of the light on his desk clicked off.  Craning her neck, she saw a hulking silhouette round the edge of the stables and ducked down as she heard the gentle rumble of a motorcycle.

‘A motorcycle,’ she thought absently, hands fluttering to cover her stomach.  

She had never ridden a motorcycle.  

Suddenly her thighs yearned for the mechanical power of it ( _a daydreamed sensation_ ) _._ She could almost feel what it would be like to have her back pressed firmly against the broad chest of a sturdy teacher.  She almost could the feel the control of the machine at her fingers, the curling of them around the rubber grips while accelerating.

 _Summer air, thick like butterscotch on her skin. Zapping pings of bugs hitting bare, sunset-warmed shinbones. Riding to nowhere in particular and everywhere on their little island ( **her**  island).  Kicking up great, billowing plumes of tan dust on gravel roads and getting lost on lanes to fields with turns and turns and turns to obscurity.  Climbing off of the motorcycle and laughing, her searching fingers in saddle bags to produce sweating Cokes or beers or wax paper-wrapped sandwiches. Refueling and buying a pack of cigarettes without her own face staring back at her from the newspaper stand, letting the cashier keep the change with a smile.  **Anonymous**. Swapping spots, snuggling into a leather jacket that smelled of forest and man. Picking a stray auburn hair off of a white t-shirt as she climbed onto the back of a motorcycle_.

She yanked the curtains shut, her mouth tripping over a series of four-letter words.

The second night, she had taken up residence by the window in her riding gear. “This is stupid,” she said aloud, just to confirm that she still had a voice. 

She made it as far as the back stairwell before returning to her bedroom and stripping down to her underwear.   _Second guessing it all –– the riding, the answer to his question, what she would say if he tried to ask again, whether she wanted him to ask again._ Sitting with a frustrated pout pulling at her mouth, she elected not to go downstairs.

When she heard the roar of the motorcycle’s engine, she was reasonably certain that she would never ride on either the front or back of a motorcycle.

The third night, she was caught up in a state affair. 

_An intricate blue dress, a twisted updo that made her temples ache and eyes water, a series of conversations switching from French to English that made her head spin._

Frank called that evening when she was finished, and they exchanged pleasantries. She rubbed her feet and stared at the window, knowing that with the phone call it was too late to make an appearance at the stables and to find Fraser.  After wading through the mundanities of their daily lives (t _he scallops she had for dinner and the dreadful summer cold he felt coming on_ ), Frank concluded their conversation, saying, “I will see you Saturday.”  

She felt her heart catch on something and the thoughts in her brain splash against the limits of her skull, like water sloshing in a basin. With a flat affect, she responded with the only thing that came to mind: “ _Alright_.”

Exhausted, she slept face down and dreamt of summer-warm limbs on beach towels, suntan lotion, and sweating bottles of beer with a broad-shouldered stranger. A motorcycle just down the beach and shaking sand out of canvas tennis shoes with peals of howling laughter.

On the fourth night, she finally exited her suite via the back stairwell.  She found the stables to be eerily quiet. Riding gloves in hand, she made her way down to the last stall where a light glowed with the promise of Fraser’s continued presence.  

The door had been thrown open wide into the exercise yard.  Drawing her blouse over her mouth, Claire sputtered on the unusual, odiferous cocktail of feed, hay, dust, urine, and manure in the air.

Fraser, shirt sleeves rolled to the elbows, was crouching at the gate of the stall, arms draped through the pickets.  She was about to say something, an overtly playful volley as an olive branch to apologize for her hasty departure earlier in the week.

But then what she was made her fall nearly breathless.

One of the mares was on her side –– legs extended out in front of her, neck heaving.  The heavy, panting sounds of labor filled the air.

“Not that much longer, love,” Fraser crooned, a piece of straw rolling between his fingers.  

Claire stuffed her gloves one of her back pockets and took a tentative step towards the gate. A little stunned and already knowing the answer, she asked, “Is the mare in labor?”

Fraser turned, immediately narrowing his eyes. A man she did not recognize was standing looking at a watch with detached coolness. When he looked up he startled, mouth falling open dumbly as he made a half-bow. Claire waved the gesture off with a casual dismissiveness.

“Yer majesty…” the man said, fingers going to straighten his tie as he stood back to full height. “An honor, I’m…”

Jamie broke into the introduction. “Aye.  She’s been straining and pacing about for a few hours now. It’s about time.”

For a moment Fraser’s eyes traveled over Claire, inspecting but not questioning.  It was an intrusive look, searching intimately, but she welcomed it. It drove out her indecision about coming down to the stables.

Fraser added, “Her name is Epona. The mare.”

Something in her wanted  _this_  to be okay –– this awkward, silent exchange of looks and their companionable silence. 

A few days earlier she had pushed, wanting him to ask something  _personal_  just so she could hear herself say it. And he had risen to it.

He had asked who she was.

She yearned for the sickening feeling of riding in a car at high speed at reverse. The gut churning knowledge that while she could never  _go back_ , she could reverse course.  What she  _wanted_  was to go back in time –– to that moment where she had encouraged him to ask and he had. She would amend her response to his inquiry.

She would blurt out the  _true_  answer:  _‘Who am I? I don’t have a bloody idea anymore, but I can tell you who I **used to be**. I liked that person.’_

From Fraser’s thoughtful expression, it was clear his inspection of her did not identify whatever it was that he was looking for. She wondered if he craved that reversing feeling, too, or if for him this was  _work_.  Her mind was a traffic jam as she considered the possibility –– he was simply  _putting up with her_. 

 _The Queen, someone to be appeased_. 

The thought grabbed at her guts and refused to let go.

When she said nothing, Fraser added, “This is Dr. Matthew Martin.  He’s an equine veterinarian.  Best in the business. At least he says.”

“Pleasure,” Claire said blankly, looking at Dr. Martin who was mumbling  _something_  and plainly stunned into incoherence by the near-midnight appearance of the Queen.Brows furrowed, Claire took one more tentative step towards the gate. “Can I come watch?”

She was not sure why she asked the question when there was absolutely nothing Fraser or the veterinarian could have done to stop her. But it felt like an intrusion nonetheless. 

Fraser quirked an eyebrow, lips curling into a slight smile. “Foaling can be a messy business, ma’am.”

“And  _your point_ , Fraser?” She raised a single, manicured eyebrow of her own. At this point, she would have sacrificed the entire trust of land in her portfolio for a little  _messy business_.

In a movement so fast that she wondered if she had imagined it, Fraser licked his lower lip and drew it in between his teeth.

 _He was smirking at her_.

His expression flipped back to neutrality by the time he shrugged and responded, “No point, ma’am. Ye’re welcome to watch, if ye want.”

Giving her own lower lip a quick swipe of her tongue, she went to the gate and stood next to him.  For a moment she considered crouching just so she would not be towering over him. He had her off balance and she wanted to be on his level.  But before she could adjust her position, he stood, dropping the piece of straw.

“It willna be much longer, ma’am. She’s been pacin’ and walkin’ the fence line for a few hours, ye ken. The foal’s in the right position, allantoic fluid’s been released. Ye’re just in time.”

“How do you know all of this?” Claire asked, not looking at him but unable to stifle the slight tone of awe in her voice.

“It’s my job, ma’am,” Fraser said simply.

Holding her breath, Claire watched as the mare huffed and strained, going to her knees and then back to her side.  

An unidentifiable part of the foal eased from the mare. It was covered in a bluish-white, rubbery protective layer. Claire reached for Fraser’s forearm, fingers winding around the curve of it and feeling the almost undetectable twitch of muscle there. “Oh Christ,” she whispered.

“And I guess I’ve seen this a fair bit… farm life, and all.”

Heart in her throat, Claire looked down at her hand. Fraser glanced down only momentarily, a quick flick of his eyes, before he resettled his attention on the mare. After a beat, Claire let her hand fall casually away. The warm bristle of his flesh was imprinted on her palm.

It felt like an eternity and no time at all passed before the foal was born, sticky and awkward in the straw. The slick, velvety head swiveled awkwardly. Eyes stinging, Claire went to her knees and peered through the bars of the gate. The mare gently licked behind the foal’s ears, earning a whimper from the newest addition to the stables.

“The instinct… it is… beautiful.  Nature just fills in the blanks where no one dictates how to act, how to be.”

Fraser stayed silent, leaning against the post and indicating with his head for the veterinarian to leave.  For a moment Fraser studied her: the hair flopped over her brow, the slight parting of her lips as she watched the mare inspect her foal, the slow way she blinked when plainly  _amazed_  by something.

After a time, when they were alone, she asked, “Will you stay the night here then, Fraser?”

“Aye,” he responded quietly, running a hand over the back of his neck.  “There’s somewhat messy business of expelling the placenta. Could take a few hours. If it doesna pass, weel, it’s a different kinda situation, ye ken?”

“Mmmm.”  The mare nudged the foal’s neck, grunting slightly. “I want to stay. To help. I mean, if you need it.”

“Alright,” he said, his voice carrying an entirely different tone than hers had the day before. “I’d like ye to stay, if this is where ye want to be.”

Turning, she looked at him.  

A riot of urges swelled in him.  

To sweep aside the chunk of damp curls from her forehead.  

To lick his lips as he inhaled.  

To straighten the collar of her blouse, pat it down so it rested flat at her neck. 

To brush the straw from the knees of her riding pants.

“It’s where I want to be,” she confirmed, lips curling slightly before she turned back.  

Fraser did not turn. He thought ten thousand things in Gaelic at once.


	5. Part V: A Deal

##  **_Part V: A Deal_ **

Claire woke with a stiff neck, a half-empty bottle of warm beer between her knees and a thick, scratchy wool blanket around her shoulders. 

She remembered the finer ( _grittier_ ) parts of the night and sitting down on the ground next to Colonel Fraser, drinking a beer that he offered to her with an apologetic smile (“ _staff keeps them in the break room, ye ken it’s summer…”)._ She remembered curling under a tack blanket he offered her when the night went a little chilly. 

She recalled the way he looked when she opened her bottle –– a little slack jawed before grinning as she situated the edge of the bottle and the bottle cap over a railing and popped it off easily.

She could not recollect, however, feeling anything near enough to the feeling of tiredness that would have let her fall asleep in the stables.

But she had.

Swallowing hard and grimacing at the stale taste in her mouth, she came to grips with the fact that she was still in the stables.  Quick to her feet, shedding the blanket to the ground, she shook her head.  “Idiot,” she mumbled, wiping at the back of her pants.

“Dinna beat yerself up, yer majesty.”

Colonel Fraser was seated at his desk, the fingers of his right hand twirling a pen and those of his left tapping the ledger on his desk. Off balance, Claire just blinked and then defaulted to a blistering glare. “Can you just…  _stop_  with the ‘ _yer majesty_ ’ business?”

Even from a distance, she could tell that he was smirking.   _The gall_.

“Of  _course_ ,  _yer majesty_.”  Somehow he managed to hit with precision the awkward accent she had divined in her retort –– a meeting in the middle of Scottish and English that she had meant to sound  _mocking,_  but he apparently found simply  _charming_.    _Charming_.  

‘Watch it,’ his mind warned as he tamped down on flicker of doubt and caution at the back of his neck.  Another part of his mind, its voice an octave lower than Jamie’s own, whispered, ‘ _Forget it. Throw caution to the wind, Fraser._ ’

Sighing, Claire let loose her braid and shook her head.  Her hair was significantly curlier than he had ever seen it before –– knotty and kinky from the braid and natural wave.  

She said something.  He blinked. “Huh?”

“The  _time_?” she repeated, no small amount of exasperation in her voice as she looked him up and down.

Her repetition of her question took just long enough for him to get his bearings again, to bring his wandering mind back to heel.  _(Away from wondering what those royal curls would smell like as she turned her head just so, as a breeze lifted, or how they would feel over the back of his hand as he slipped an arm around her shoulders.)_

“Mmmm… ye’ve been out,  _snoring_ ––”

“Excuse me?”  Glare melting, she just stared incredulously, straightening her shirt and tucking the loose tail back into the waistband.  “I do  _not_  snore, and may I  _remind_  you––”

“So, let me get this straight––”

“ _Wait_. Colonel Fraser, do you  _interrupt_  me now?” A single eyebrow rose behind the mass of curls falling over her forehead.  A  _sound_ , low in his throat, threatened her resolve. She  _wanted_  to laugh at him, to poke fun in return, but she didn’t.  

Furrowing her brows, Claire strode towards Fraser’s desk as authoritatively as she could muster under the circumstances ( _face creased from sleeping against the stable wall, covered in bits of stable debris, tumbleweed of hair_ ).  Something in her voice told him that she was close to rounding the bend to playfulness. Maybe not a lightheartedness between equals, but she saw something in him worth entertaining.

A cat enjoying its mouse, trapping its tail, watching it wriggle.

“Would ye like me to share my understanding of the rules, ma’am, lest we have any other confusion?”

“I would, thank you.”

“Interrupting –– not allowed.  Telling ye that ye snore somethin’ fierce –– no.  Calling ye by yer name––”

“ _Claire_ ––”

“–– aye, that  _is_ yer _name_  ––  _yes_. Are these the rules of engagement?”

“Yes, that covers it.” This time, she could not hide the smile that touched her lips ever-so-briefly. “You have become quite familiar overnight.”

“We watched a horse give birth together.  We canna come back from that,  _Cl––_ ”

Her breath caught, and suddenly she realized that she wanted nothing more than to hear what her name ( _those six letters in that single syllable_ ) sounded like in his accent, with that tenor, from those lips. When he let his voice trail, she raised an eyebrow and sat in the chair across from her desk.

After a moment, he commented, “We’ve no’ been for a ride in a while.”

“Hmmmm. No.  We have not. You…”  This time, it was  _her_  voice that trailed, disappearing like mist at daybreak.

“I…?” he echoed, eyebrows raised and left hand now tapping freely at his thigh.

“A nervous tick?”

“A  _tick_ ,” he corrected evenly, his fingers falling still and slipping out of sight under the desk. “It’s no’ a ‘nervous’ tick.”

“Do you have a nervous tick, Fraser?”

It felt like a flirtation to him. The ebbing and flowing rhythm of their banter had a  _lightness_  that he had not known in a very long time. It was a feeling that predated the war. A time when he had been  _young_ ,  _dumb_ ,  _idealistic_. Back when no one had mumbled ‘thank you for your service’ with eyes downcast, the unsaid bit just as profound: ‘thank god it wasn’t me.’ A time shortly after he had kissed his first girl ( _not a woman_ ) with her blonde hair between their lips and a dot of forgotten toilet paper on the underside of his chin where had nicked himself shaving.  An innocence that made him drive home with his cock hard just at the memory of her lips and tongue, the soft swell of her breasts pressing against chest.

“I’m sure I do.”  He bit his tongue before adding ‘ _ma’am_.’

“What is it?” She leaned forward in the chair, putting her elbows on his desk and her chin in one hand.

“I’ll make a deal wi’ ye.”

“Oh, you think that this is how this works?” She was being  _reckless_ , she knew, but she was  _alive_ and it was after midnight. The thrill in her –– a tingling abandon that took residence in the very center of her brain –– was too rousing to dismiss without a little indulgence.

“My deal’s  _this_. Ye figure it out, and I’ll no’ ever call ye ‘yer majesty’ or ‘ma’am’ when it’s just the two of us.”  Under the desk, he curled his tapping fingers into the seam of his pants to still them.

“ _Claire_. I have a name.”

“Aye, ye do, ma’am. Ye’ve said it a number of times now.”

“Okay, you know what…” Her voice trailed off, longing for him to jump in with some other tantalizing bit to bait her, to prolong the moment.

It felt like a flirtation to her. He challenged her in a way that no one had since she had just been ‘Her Royal Highness,’ a throwaway in the line of succession to the throne. A time when she had been  _young_ ,  _reckless_ ,  _free_. Back when no one had mumbled an excess of honorifics to her. When she thought she was far enough removed that she could maybe pull off being a nurse or a doctor ( _to get to the throne would have meant Uncle Lamb, any of his children, her mother, her sister –– all dead –– it was a long shot_ ). She had fantasized that she could be someone who fell into a  _normal_ life. Maybe live single in London. Dye her hair blonde. Hate it. Dye it back, but miscalculate the swatch on the box and end up with raven hair. Smoke cigarettes in pubs with men and listen to the radio as they traced her arm with fingers uninhibited by her status.

“What do ye say?” he asked, her reverie breaking cleanly in two. “Do we have a deal?”

She did not hesitate. “We have a deal.”


	6. Part VI: Vibrations

##  **_Part VI: Vibrations_ **

Getting to Scotland for the Queen’s summer holiday was a production in every sense of the word.  

Behind the scenes, an impressive machinery ground away at details, both minute and significant, for the descent of the Queen and her staff upon Holyrood palace.

Preparation involved nearly all facets of her daily life and operations on two fronts –– London and Edinburgh.  

It involved setting boundaries and expectations for advisors left in London to act in the Queen’s stead. 

Meetings and more meetings were schedule to identify the workforce to be mobilized for a few precious weeks’ worth of work. 

All manner of questions arose about chattel –– the jewelry the queen would wear while hosting dinners in Edinburgh, the clothes that needed to be carefully wrapped in tissue and arranged for transport, the day-to-day incidentals required to keep the entire show running. 

And then there was the matter of scheduling, a feat that required a rail station-like precision in coordinating the movement of things, staff, and the Queen herself.

Each morning of the two weeks leading up to her summer flight from one city to the next was peppered with logistical questions.  It was a dizzying, non-delegable series of asks ––  _who, what, when, where_  –– that clouded mornings, afternoons, and early evenings.

Claire spent what felt like hours every day ticking boxes –– “ _yes_ ” to roses but “no” to gardenias, beef Wellington for this state dinner or haddock for that one, the marigold silk dress for the theatre and the blood red one ( _yes, that one… with that neckline_ ) for a gathering hosted in her honor by the French consulate, “ _okay_ ” to moving an appointment by a few hours to make another fit, and “ _fine_ ” to the question of whether Frank could travel up with her and stay for two of the six weeks –– one at the front end and one at the back end.

Two Fridays before her departure, she haltingly raised the Scotland trip with Colonel Fraser during the preparation for one of their nightly rides.  It had only been a short time, but they had learned one another’s process by rote. They worked in tandem to ready Brimstone and Donas for the nightly rides that had started to get longer and longer.

“You will be coming to Holyrood this summer, yes?” She ran a hand down Brimstone’s mane just so she had something to busy her jittery fingers. Fraser finished securing his own ride’s saddle and stepped to the side. Out from behind the barrier of Donas’ thick, corded neck, he could catch her eye.

“Aye.  This is the first year I’ve been asked to go.”

Something in his tone implied an inquiry.

He left it dangling and unasked:  _Did you arrange it to be so?_

It was yet another question in her days’ worth of questions.

( _In reality, the response if he would just ask was simple. She was asked if the Crown Equerry should come to Scotland. She checked “yes” on a piece of paper. It was not hard decision, even if the short-lived battle that raged inside her as she picked up her pen was an infinitely complicated thing._ )

Was it her doing that he was coming to Scotland?

It was not a question that she wanted to answer.

Well-trained in evasion, she side-stepped his unasked question, vaguely responding, “It is the first year you have been in charge.”

“That it is, ma’am.”  

Neither made an effort to hide their facial expressions over his use of her least favorite honorific. Her grimace slashed across her face and wrinkled her forehead, contorting her features.

(‘ _Lovely_ ,’ he thought.)

His smirk quirked at one corner of his mouth and the corners of his eyes creased.

(‘ _Bloody bastard_ ,’ she mused, fighting the urge to meet his smirk with one of her own.)

“I’ll be looking forward to seeing home for a while,” he added. There was a touch of whimsy to his voice when he said ‘home,’ just a momentary flicker in his eyes that accompanied the broadening of his accent. “Even if it’s just the city and no’  _home_.”

She wanted to ask where he grew up, to have him tell her about  _home_  and what it meant to him. Instead, she instead exerted an undue amount of concentration on getting herself up and situated in her saddle.  

Usually their rides were comfortable.  Almost as a rule, the evenings were warm and their respective steads maintained an even cadence that melted deliciously with the sounds of summer. 

Tonight, though, she felt sticky beneath her clothes –– under her arms, between her breasts, along the small of her back, and even the creases at the insides of her elbows. She felt herself pulling ahead a little, the heels of her feet urging a bit more speed in the stirrups.  Their ride was quiet but for Fraser’s humming of an unpleasant, jolting sort of non-tune without rhythm. It did not bear even the slightest resemblance to any song she knew.  

Something about that nameless, toneless tune made her throat go dry.  She wanted him to stop simply so she could quit wondering what song it was that he was trying to reproduce.

Letting out a long stream of breath, emptying her belly of it completely, she turned over her shoulder, a sticky swath of hair falling in her eyes. She called out to him, a little louder than necessary, “Follow me?” 

Fraser nodded, picking up his own pace and following her into the gardens. He felt his heart rate pick up, his hands go clammy. “The horses will no’ take much care of yer gardens.”

“Just a bit further, Colonel Fraser,” she responded as he closed the gap between them. “I used to do this when I was a girl, here visiting Lamb in the summers. I mean, without the horses, but come back here. It is quite lovely.”

She caught herself in her familiarity ( _Lamb_ ), allowed her breath to hitch ( _round in her throat_ ), but she did not backtrack in order to correct herself. She was well beyond the point of informality with him with her  _bargain_ with him ( _that he would call her by her name if she could figure out his tick – the thing that told legions of what he was thinking and feeling_ ). 

Fraser dismounted first when they reached the small fountain. It going green at the edges, slick with algae.  The great lion’s face carved among a riot of filigree was a little off, like it was originally carved of wax and melted in a hot summer’s sun. A veritable jungle of ivy clung to the base of the fountain, tangled as if each small offshoot of the vine had been fighting through the day for sunlight. 

“We are fairly far from where the tourists go and the grounds staff mostly leave this nook of the grounds alone.”

Throwing a leg over Brimstone, she slid off of the saddle and stumbled slightly, muttering an apology as she smacked into his chest face first. He reached for her, his instincts finely tuned to situate her back on her feet. She looked up at him, chin jutting out a little defiantly as she pulled back from the hold he had on her arms.

“Are ye okay, ma’am?”

She was breathing hard, flushed. Her feet were cemented in place. “I am perfectly fine.”

He wanted to taste her mouth –– the good and the bad that dwelled there under her words.  He wanted to draw her close to feel the warmth vibrate from her body –– the  _need_  for connection that he suspected that she sheltered there, close beneath the surface and yet hidden.  

“It is beautiful, is it not? Kind of wild and unkempt?” she asked, forgetting her place and letting the front of her body get pulled in by him. The fronts of their bodies were magnets that never met. Only the buttons of their shirts became acquainted.

He could spot the need in her, having had it dwell under his breastbone for years. That  _need_ had existed as a general proposition ( _planted by his father’s explanation:_ “ _someday ye’ll find a lass and ye’ll ken she’s the one” and his mother’s stories: “yer da, he keeps us safe and I’d risk everything for him”_ ). But now, it was a  _directed_  yearning, a desire for  _something more_. And if he had to guess, he would imagine it started as lust that night he saw her gently curving leaning over that gate ( _before he knew who she was_ ) and developed in earnest as she allowed him to peel back some of the layers of her ( _that look on her face while she watched the foaling, the one on her face at the very moment she rounded the bend to this fountain_ ). 

“Lamb…” 

 _She caught herself again._   _White teeth worried her lower lip as she looked at him._

“I ken ye’re speaking of the King, God rest hi––”

“ _Stop_  with that. He hated people standing on ceremony. But  _yes_. The King. My  _uncle_. He became my father. But he was  _always_  Lamb. He would always bring me out here. I’m not sure how it has escaped notice, but it has.”

He wanted to learn the curve of her fingers behind his ear. He could picture himself using his fingers to draw her up by the chin, despite her short stature, and bring himself down  _just enough_. Only then, when they were aligned, would he could draw the very breath from her lungs and words from her mouth. And then, he would release her until her breath was humid and panting just below his Adam’s apple.

She blinked hard, the spell dissolving. She arched her foot, testing her ankle after the slight stumble. As if the moment was on a wheel, she rolled it back before her confession.

“ _I’m fine_ ,” she repeated unnecessarily. “I landed on my feet. No harm, no foul.”

The universe was infinite, which meant that there were innumerable worlds where the alignment of things allowed this feeling in her to bloom. 

Where her sister lived or her mother lived or both lived.  

Where her Uncle Lamb had even one child.  

Where the weight of a crown did not weigh on her even when it was locked away, wrapped in velvet in some room she never saw.  

Where she had never stepped into a gilded carriage to be carried and condemned. 

Where Fraser was the war hero she had been promised to, a world in which  _he was Frank_.

“Are ye?” he asked. “ _Fine_?”

His accent on the word made it sound insidious rather than some middling banal response to stand in for a real answer. 

It cut to the heart of the  _real_  answer ( _chaotic, confused, alone_ ).

But the universe was  _infinite_ , which meant there were innumerable worlds where Claire  _just told him the truth_. There were worlds where she drew his questioning mouth to her answering one. 

Where lived as she wanted to. 

Where  _this ghost she had become_ (a person with her hair who she did not recognize when she looked in the mirror) was not even a consideration.

Then there was  _this_  universe in  _this_ moment, where she said what she meant and did none of the above. 

“No. I am not.”

The spell of her certainty and honesty broke as she turned her head, slipping from his grasp. She moved to the edge of the fountain. Unlit, it babbled quietly.  

She unbuttoned the top few buttons on her blouse and made sure her bra wasn’t showing before pulling the shirt tails out of her pants. She tied the front of it up just above her navel. He just watched. The cool breeze dried the sweat dwelling on her abdomen and lower back almost immediately. Eyes focused on the water disrupting the surface of the small pool, she bent to pull off her boots.

She prayed that he would have the good sense to mount his horse and walk away.

‘ _Leave_ ,’ she implored inside, willing herself not to tear up as she shed her layers.

If he refused to  _just go_ , she prayed that when she turned around things would be  _normal_  between them again.

“I read once that everything has a sound,” Fraser said from some ways behind her. “Vibrations or some such thing.”

“Oh really?” she asked, throwing one foot over the edge of the fountain and shivering. She sat on the edge of the fountain, closing her eyes as the fine mist cooled her face. 

_She could not have cared less about sound and vibration right now._

“Aye. Perhaps except for space, they think. Physicists. There is always  _some sound_ , even if we canna hear it.”

He was next to her then, having not taken her up on her silent plea for him to leave. 

She could feel his warmth and the ripple in the pool of water as he slipped his own bare feet in. 

She could feel the vibration of his voice in her chest. 

She wondered if he could hear the sound of her heart beating in her chest, the wheels of her mind cranking away, or the sound of each of her pores opening to soak in more of  _him_.

“Do you think every person has a  _unique_  sound, Colonel Fraser?”

“I dinna think so.” She heard him swallow and she moved her hand to rest on his thigh, eyes still fixed ahead. “I  _ken_  that every person has a unique sound, ma’am.”

“Do you think…  _we_  have a sound?

“You and me?” he stated unnecessarily. 

They both knew what she meant, but she nodded anyway after a moment. 

“Aye. I ken we do.”


	7. Part VII: Magnolias

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Late to bloom and still beautiful. <3

##  **Her Royal Highness (H.R.H.)**

##  **Part VII: Magnolias**

Claire was not sure how she got to the stables or why she wandered down to them, but she had. And seeing him, there was no way she could turn back.

“Those are bonny,” he had remarked, nodding towards her fist full of blooms.

Raising her eyebrows, she looked down at her hands. “Caerhays Surprise. Magnolias.  These are late bloomers. Usually they bloom and die before May is over.”

She suddenly could not look at him, could not see him seeing her.  Her fingers and eyes worked over the velvety petals.   ‘I feel transparent when I am with you,’ she thought of saying, but let a small sigh stand in for the sentiment.

“Gardening, albeit in a very disconnected, assisted kind-of-way…” She wanted a garden, full of weeds to tackle and errant vines to hack away, a place of her own where dirt filled the curve of her fingernails and stained the skin of her knees. Not one that she planned, but not one that she neither planted nor tended to on her own. “It is still a passion of mine. It is calming. Like riding is. I mean, other people fertilize the flowers and other plants, but I try to get down there… to check on things.”

The silence between them took on its own atmosphere, exerting a gale force on the architecture they had constructed to maintain their well-calculated distance.  In the daylight she saw things she had never seen at night. The pale scar on his left hand’s third knuckle looked pink, almost like it was still healing. A narrow, single streak of silver broke the fiery crop of his hair. It was apparent that he had not slept the night before. (Neither had she.) He moved more cautiously, too, and his silence was disarming.

“These are beautiful.  They should have been thriving in May, but here we are…”

Her voice trailed off, the ends of her words pawing through static.

“Frank’s here. He is going to travel to Scotland with me. Tomorrow.”  There was a quiver in the architecture as his face shifted, the corners of his mouth quirking up. She wondered what it meant, whether it meant anything at all. “Are we alone?”

“Aye –– all of the men are having a lunch and cigarette break. They’ll be gone for a fair while.”  He looked down at his watch before settling his hands on his hips. “Why are ye here, ma’am?”

“I have no clue,” she said truthfully. He clicked his tongue. “I asked you before, Colonel Fraser. Do I need a reason to come down here?”

“The fountain… ye touched me.”

She fought the urge to roll her eyes, a petulant habit she had shed for iciness since her coronation.  “I touched you companionably. Does that accurately reflect your recollection?”

“It does, though it’s no’ quite complete.”

Blush flourished along her breast bone, creeping up and threatening to out itself under the neck of her blouse. “What details would you fill in to make it complete?”

“Och, weel, I’m no’ sure it’s my place to say.”

“Well, I can direct you to say.”

“That ye can.”  One of his eyebrows arched nearly to his hairline. “Ye asked me if we have a sound. I saw it in yer eyes. This isna… normal.”

In her heart, she ached at the naked truth of it.  Those thoughts of a life, the one she had wanted, made her want to travel to him and draw him close.  The thoughts of a life, the one she had never wanted but had, glued her to the spot.

“Ye’re wadin’ about in things that ye ken ye… no, that we have no business invading. Ye’re to be marrit to that Randall man.”

She refused to think of Frank, likely sleeping off his jetlag in a guest bed. “Invading, am I?”

“Ye pick one part, the insignificant part. This is no’ a word game.” He raked his fingers through his hair. “I canna do this.”

“Should I go?” she asked plainly. Her mind went to war with itself –– wishing his answer to be ‘yes’ (she had a life; she had Frank, an obligation to fulfill) and at the same time praying his answer would be ‘no’ (for him to have the nerve to say something, anything that would draw them together in this daylight)

“No.” He took a step forward and she took half of a step backwards. “Where would you go?”

His question was simple and she had no answer other than ‘upstairs… to him.’ Instead, she lied, “I do not know where I will go.”

The falsehood was bulky and wrong in the mouth that created it. It came too easily and they both knew it for what it was. A way to push the reality of the moment aside.

“You are giving me whiplash,” he muttered, both hands going to his hair.

He could not define what was happening, but it was keeping him up at night. When he slept, she rewrote his nightmares into dreams. (Curls that he imagined would be slippery under his fingers. Lips that would curve into a smile beneath his mouth. Whispers that would make turning back impossible. Someone to look at over the edge of the newspaper, to find that she was looking back at him.)

“I am going to go.”

She turned away.

‘Count to twenty,’ she schooled herself in her sternest internal voice.

There was no way that she would be able to walk away from him and not cry, to meet the daylight and see Frank again if she did not collect herself. Her hands fell, the bouquet of hastily-snipped magnolias falling with a near-soundless plop on the freshly-scrubbed concrete.  Needing to busy herself, she wound her newly freed fingers into the hem of her top and she closed her eyes.

The world dark, she silently recited her conclusion: ‘And then walk away.’

One.

The sigh that came from him was ragged, battle weary.  “I dinna ken if I can wait forever.”

Two.

When she opened her eyes she focused on the streaking glow of sunlight that peeked through the closed stable door.

“The waiting hurts.”

Three.

“Tell me, ma’am. Have ye figured it out yet? The tell. My tell. We had a deal.”

Four.

“I had it figured out when we made the deal,” she admitted, her voice quiet.  He was tuned in to her. She felt him in the very marrow of her bones. There was no way she could not have known then, when she agreed. “I knew it then.”

“And?”

Five.

A final blast knocked over what little remained of the architecture.  

For the first time in ages, she spoke freely, though with her eyes closed and back to him.

“I know what it means. Knowing this about you, watching closely enough to know you. It means there is something here that I want to explore. We would only have the summer.”

Her fingers curled into fists at her side, her fingernails sinking into her palm.

“I do not know if I can start something like that. Like this. I am marrying––”

“––him––” he supplied.

“Yes. I am marrying him in October.”

Six.

“Do ye love him? Yer Randall.”

The pain exploded in her chest, embedding shrapnel in each of her veins. She was not a crier, but her cheeks were wet.

‘Fuck,’ she thought at the question she attempted not even to ask herself.

Seven.

Her breath came out in a stream before she confessed, “It is significantly more complicated than love.”

She said the word almost with pain, as if she peeling back scar tissue on some of the darker places inside of her.

“These things are not easy, Colonel Fraser.”

“That’s no’ an answer to my question.”  He was nearer now. His voice was lower, close and wrapping around her. Vision blurring, she started to look over her shoulder just to gauge his nearness.

Eight.

He was right there.  She was close enough to see the way his pupils reacted when she turned –– dilating until his almost-navy irises were whisper thin.

“It is what I have for an answer to your question.”  

“No one grows up wishing, praying to marry someone they dinna love.”

Inhaling, she anticipated his touch deep in her belly. The longing for his fingers ached and burned. “There are a lot of things in my life that I never wished for when I was growing up.”

Nine.

His hands rose and he touched her, his fingers warm and firm on her shoulders. Her heart hammered (tapping tapping tapping under her breasts hard enough that she could feel its rhythm in her mouth).  Her breath caught (round and with a pulse of its own) in her throat.

On a journey, his hands moved from her shoulders, across her collar bones, and up to her throat.  When his thumb met her pulse point she vaguely wondered if he could hear her heart. His head tilted ever so slightly and his tongue darted out to wet his lips.

She had to say it.  Just to prove that she knew.  “Your tell. It is your hands, your fingers. You… drum things –– your leg, a desk, any surface –– when you are nervous or thinking.”

Ten.

“Astute observation.”

He had not asked permission, but she felt the need to give him a warning. “I want to touch you.”

“Claire––”

Her name on his tongue was sweet, low. It was too fast and she yearned to hear it again (and again and then a thousand, million times more). He cleared his throat, thinking through the permutations of how this moment could end.  The most realistic among the scenarios he imagined ended with a profound heartache. She started, “I am sorry, I––”

Eleven.

She fell silent when he shook his head. She turned her cheek into his palm.

“If ye want to touch me, do it.” Although she had not asked for permission to touch him, he granted it willingly, committing himself (he was sure) to some form of storied heartbreak of which he would never speak. (‘Ruin me forever,’ his mind implored.)  

And she did –– her hands rising up between their bodies.  His cheek was smooth and warm, freshly shaved. She wondered what he would feel like with some stubble to prickle her fingertips –– a little undone after a lazy weekend or on a morning without the thoughtless interruption of an alarm clock’s shuddering call to rise.  

Twelve.

His voice was trapped somewhere in his throat under the weight of ten thousand words.  Gaelic and English, languages that had not yet been invented and would consist of the sounds he could draw from her with his mouth and hands, hips and tongue. She smelled like summer at midnight –– floral (the magnolias she had dropped with their notes of tart lemon, spice, and verbena), musky (a delicate, feminine smell), and maybe immortal (far beyond her years, ethereal).

Thirteen.

Her tongue darted out expectantly before her teeth sank into the swell of her lower lip. As she drowned in him, she ached everywhere –– breasts, bones, ligaments, muscles, skin –– all the way down to her very core. She could taste his breath –– layers of bright apple and sharp peppermint.

Fourteen.

His eyes closed and he made ten thousand promises to himself.  (Do not fall in love with this woman. Do not make this harder. For either of you. Leave all of this here.)

She wondered if he knew that he visited her dreams. Dreams that left her with a trickle of sweat down her spine and tongue struck dumb. Dreams where he made love to her in a small apartment that she had never seen with well-worn furniture, with loaves of stale bread wrapped in wax paper resting on the kitchen counter. Dreams where in the minutes after he made love to her, she clung to him and felt human again. Dreams where he shielded her from things that she could not bear to face on her own –– with his body or through his mere existence. Dreams that left her waking with her fingers between her thighs, a touch that could not draw out from her even the narrowest approximation of what he did to her when her eyes were closed.

Fifteen.

When he opened his eyes, he broke every single one of the ten thousand promises he had made to himself in a single, slurring breath. “I’d verra much like to kiss ye.”

Nothing else in the world existed.

“May I? Kiss ye?”

Sixteen.

His thumbs were on her cheekbones, brushing away the few tears that had fallen there.  With only the slightest of nods, she released her lower lip from her teeth, pulling herself onto her toes until her calves burned. Her own fingers drifted from his face.  Her left hand curled behind his neck and roving fingers sinking into his hair. Her right hand went to his chest, resting flat over his heart.

One of his hands skated down the front of her body to rest against her belly.

“Do it properly,” she mumbled on an exhalation.

Seventeen.

His lips turned up at a challenge accepted. He pressed against her just a little so she started to move backwards.

“Do ye have any pointers, yer majesty?”

Swallowing, she felt the wall meet her spine. “This is a test, not a lecture, Colonel Fraser.”

He let loose a short laugh as he exhaled. “It’s Jamie, Claire. Jamie.”

Eighteen.

“You talk too much.”  She did not know where the flirtation came from, but it bubbled up from her in anticipation. “Far too much, Jamie.”

Nineteen.

“Ye’re one to complain about that,” he chuckled, feeling a pulsing, involuntary clench in her belly as he splayed his fingers over her. “Claire.”

She hummed, swallowing again as her eyes drifted shut.

His breath was on her mouth, the tips of his fingers working into her flesh. In a slow motion, draining kind of way, all sensation but those that lived within him and between them fell away. Everything was funneled through his touch.  

Twenty.

But then: “Claire?”

And Jamie was gone –– off of her, his back against the opposite wall. It took her a moment to open her eyes, to face the loss of their connection.

“Yer fiancé’s wondering where ye’ve gone off to.”

“Claire?” There it was again.  Him.

“Jamie…”

His hands were behind his back and he had one foot on the wall, watching her. He may as well have been a thousand miles away.

“You are shutting down,” she muttered accusatorily, pushing off of the wall and taking a step towards him.

“Ma’am, I––” She wanted to dive across the stable and take him by the shoulders, to finish what they had started and to silence anything other than her name from his lips for good.

“Claire?” Frank was getting closer now, the sound of his voice not hazy as though shouted across a great distance.

“Fuck,” she hissed, balling her hands into fists at her side.

“Ye should go––”

“Stop talking. I need to think. Fuck.”

“Ye asked earlier if ye should go. I’m tellin’ ye. Ye should leave before ye canna turn back.”

“I––”

“Go.”

She stared for a moment, incredulous, and then turned away from him again. This time, she committed herself to walking away.  She wondered if she would be walking away from him forever.

When she was gone, he put the magnolias in a coffee tin of water, arranging the blooms as carefully as possible.  He wondered how long they would live.


	8. Part VIII: Schoolmates

##  **Her Royal Highness (H.R.H.)  
****Part VIII: Schoolmates**

Frank had called for her.  Fraser had walked away.  Claire had steeled herself, attempting to assemble her face into as neutral of an expression as she could manage under the circumstances. Shoulders straightened and teeth gritted together, fingers clenching into fists before relaxing, she was doing the best she could.

Claire saw him round the corner of the palace, jogging down the sloping green hill in athletic shorts and a polo. He was almost breathless when he reached her, grinning.

“Just grabbed a quick game of tennis with some friends over on the –– Claire…” his voice trailed off just as he kissed her cheek, his lips coming away salty. “What is it?”

“Nothing you should worry yourself over,” she said a little too quickly, accepting the handkerchief that he removed from his back pocket.

While she had not expected him to wipe tears from her eyes ( _it was just not his style_ ), but something about the impersonality of the gesture made her breath catch. Her heart was still breaking a few dozen meters behind her in the stables, but she was trying to grab onto it and pull it back into her body. With a little internal coaching, she reminded herself that she had  _no right_  to criticize any of this man’s gestures.

“Are you okay?”

She heard the grinding roar of a motorcycle start behind her and concentrated on dabbing the inner corners of her eyes. It was the truth when she spluttered out: “Just saying goodbye.”

“Ah, the horse.”

She reached for Frank’s hand, swallowing back the urge to lie. “Why don’t we get cleaned up for our meal?”

His thumb traveled over the back of her hand. She was sure he meant as a reassuring gesture, “Let’s.”

____________________________________

_“I knew your sister,” the man said by way of introduction, his hand warm in hers. Claire’s heart hammered._

_“How?”_

_“Schoolmates. She was a lovely, warm child.” Inspecting his face for even a trace of insincerity and finding none, her posture relaxed only infinitesimally. “It was devastating. Her loss. Your parents’ loss, too, of course.”_

_“Of course,” she echoed, mind reeling._

_At night, when she closed her eyes, she could see Ann’s face. She could smell the floral-sweet scent of Ann’s sheet of blonde hair. It fell pin-straight to the middle of her back. Their mother used to fuss over Ann’s hair in a way that tinted Claire’s vision green with jealousy. Teasing Claire had been one of Ann’s favorite pastimes –– her hair, her teeth, her soft pudge her elbows. Claire remembered little else of her sister and it disgusted her to recall only the superficial (the look of her) and the darkness (the superiority, the way she laughed at Claire’s expense)._

_Her memory of Ann was pathetic and ill-formed. Claire regularly combed her memory looking for fragments to piece into a narrative about their sibling relationship. She longed for someone else to be in front of her in the line of succession. A long lost sister or brother or cousin (someone to surface who could assert a colorable claim that Lamb had an uncharacteristic indiscretion). She knew neither of these things would happen._

_So Ann dwelled, cast in shadows, in her subconscious. Continuing to tease Claire._

_The man sounded fairly abashed when he said, “I am terribly sorry, ma’am. I should not have raised it.”_

_Closing her eyes, Claire consciously set the thought of Ann on a shelf in one of the far-flung parts of her mind that she rarely touched. Collected, she smiled.  “It is fine, Mister….”_

_He bowed but did not take his eyes off of her. “Captain Frank Randall, your majesty.”_

_The unusual intensity of the look pulled something tight in her belly._

_Captain Frank Randall was a man on a mission. She was not so naive as not to know that the mission had something to do with **her**._

_Later that night, Lamb pulled her aside. “It is not an accident that Captain Randall is here, love.” Breath hitching, she had nodded. She had figured as much. “Nothing would give me more comfort than to know that you are cared for.”_

_“But what if I don’t **want**  to be cared for?”_

_Lamb took his niece’s elbow, almost so gentle that she could not feel it. “When I die, the wolves will descend upon you. Do you understand? A husband, a family. The promise of those things will protect you, insulate you from scrutiny like what I faced.”_

_“I don’t understand how to do this,” she had whispered, pulling her elbow away from Lamb as she looked to Frank. “I mean, to do this to accomplish some end and to be…”_

_Lamb gave her a sympathetic look. “Happy?”_

_She nodded, knowing that he did not know either._

____________________________________

Claire swallowed away the tang of the memory with a sip from her glass. The red wine tasted almost dirty on her tongue –– too earthy and almost stale.

Dining with Frank that night was a quiet affair.

The dining room’s stillness was undisturbed but for a well-mannered symphony of forks, spoons, and knives. The sound of cutlery scraping across plates and tapping on the lips of soup bowls made the hairs on the backs of Claire’s hands stand at attention.

Looking at Frank from across the table, his disgust only thinly veiled he cut fat away from his meat, Claire thought and thought about the word to best describe the atmosphere.  All she was able to come up with was “ _mausoleum_.”

Seemingly out of nowhere, Frank commented, “You would like Egypt.”

His voice was a little too loud for their tomb and it echoed, making her feel as though she could jump out of her own skin.

“I have  _been_  to Egypt.” She stared at him. It was something that even  _Jamie Fraser_  knew about her. He had marveled as they rode one night, asking her about the pyramids and making soft, impressed noises that had made her smile.

“Have you  _really_?” Frank asked, taking a long draw from a glass of wine and motioning with his hand that he would like another.  The bottle was barely out of his reach and she shook her head as one of the dining room staff approached him.

‘ _Just get it yourself!_ ’ she wanted to shriek.  Instead, she said, “Leave us.”

Frank snorted. Her directive had been a little shorter than intended and the attendant visibly shifted inside of his jacket.

Steadying her breath, she smiled just a little before averting her glance to the dining room attendant. She raised her eyebrows and added, “ _Please_.”

“Of course, ma’am,” the man mumbled under his breath, casting his eyes down as he shuffled out of the room. She could tell that he was moving with alacrity and attempting to keep his footsteps light. She hated  _this_  –– people watching her at all times. She hated  _herself_  for it.

Claire rose from her chair, wiping at her mouth with a linen napkin as she strode towards Frank.  Picking up his wine glass and swirling it meaninglessly in the air by the stem, Frank smirked. “You have scared the dickens out of that poor man.”

“I did not intend to,” Claire said blandly, filling his glass with a generous hand. “Do you not ever wish for things to be just  _normal_?”

“Darling,” he drawled, drawing the glass to his nose and inhaling deeply. His eyes closed with the kind of pretension she found utterly distasteful. “I have lived normal. An entire lifetime of it. Then nine months of it in a prison camp in what seemed to me to be an endless winter.  _No_. I do not wish for  _normal_.”

“Would you say that you are chronically disinterested in normal?” she asked, narrowing her eyes and resting her weight on the table.

Raising an eyebrow, Frank looked down at where her linen dress was dangerously close to his soiled napkin. “I would say that one can garner a lot of insight into her majesty’s state of mind from the mere fact of her asking the question.”

Huffing a little and rolling her eyes, Claire took the wine glass from his hand. “I am going to ask you a question. With all sincerity.”

“Oh  _goodie_.” He leaned back into his chair, crossing his ankle over his knee.

 _He was playing a game with her_.

“Why are you going to Scotland with me?”

Licking his lips, he had a long look at her. “You really are an enigma to me, Claire. We have been together for a while and yet, I find you a difficult riddle to solve.”

“As an initial matter, I am not someone’s puzzle to solve. Not yours, not anybody’s.”

“Come now, I think we both know that is not true.” 

Clicking his tongue, he leaned forward and grabbed the small, monogramed silver cigarette case that he carried everywhere. It was one she bought for him after he proposed to her ––  _a public affair where he looked over his shoulder at a camera before he looked at her._ He turned it over and over in his hand. 

“I hear that you have been having a dalliance with the strapping Scottish stable lad.”

She lost herself for a moment –– hand fluttering to the collar of her dress, the apples of her cheeks warming, her tongue darting out to wet suddenly-parched lips. Judging from the smirk on Frank’s face, it was enough of a moment for him to see right through her.

“Well, so it is true, then.”

“I would not call it a dalliance.”

“How  _interesting_ ,” Frank mused, opening the cigarette case and drawing a single hand-rolled cigarette out. “There was a time when I would have killed a man to see that look on your face. What has he done?”

She did not believe him.  She did not believe for a  _second_  that he had ever had it in his sights to make her truly happy, to create a life. She had been a challenge to be won and he had. 

“You did not answer my question.”

“You, my  _dear_ , did not answer  _mine_.” Sighing, she finished the glass of wine in a single pull. “Your posture. It is  _atrocious_ , Claire.”

She suddenly needed an answer more than she needed air.  “Scotland.  _Why_?” 

From the curve of a smile ghosting on his lips, she knew she would be forced to ask again and again.  “Did you know that they are printing calendars with our photograph on it?”  

Frank placed a cautious hand on her shin, just at the hemline of her skirt. His fingers were warm as they moved up, brushing over the curve of her knee. 

“Were you aware that the preparations for our honeymoon are underway? Touring the far reaches of your  _kingdom_  and such. Imagine the  _jobs_  that have been created just so you can go on a little trip.”

Cold sweat broke out along her sternum –– collecting along the curve of her breasts and in the cups of her bra. Her tongue was dry when she said, “I had heard about the calendars.”

“Kings. Queens.  Princes. Princesses. Nobility. All to come see the big show in a few short months. State dinners are planned with any number of foreign dignitaries after we marry. Of course yours truly is expected by your side.”

It was all true. She swallowed the realization of it over the  –– the things to be undone if she were to say she was finished, that  _this relationship_  she was in was not going to work. His hand crawled up her inner thigh.

“How in the world do we undo all of that?”

“I did not say anything about undoing it.”  The idea of undoing it was new to her, though her distaste for it had been a long-standing, niggling feeling at the back of her mind.

“You asked about Scotland. Well, there are appearances to keep up, which you know as well as I do. Whisky. Golf. Cigars. Parties. Imagine the spectacle of canceling all of it”

“ _Right_ ,” she said, pursing her lips and studying his face. “Beyond the  _work_ … the Crown’s duties…  _why_  are you coming to Scotland?”

“It is what we are expected to do.”

Hesitating, she wondered if she had to tell him about Fraser as a matter of transactional fairness. It was a strange feeling. To have a heart so full of business that she found herself considering whether it was part of her duty to disclose  _material facts_  to the man she was to marry.  As if he were buying a property where the basement had a habit of flooding during a hard rain or a car where the second gear stuck.

She passed the wine bottle under the nose, shrugged, and emptied more than a few gulps into Frank’s wine glass. Flavorless now, it drained down her throat easily, but did nothing to quench the thirst that was closing her throat.

“Your dalliance.  Your  _Scot_. I truly do not care, Claire. Provided our children do not have red hair, I could not give a single fuck less who you let into your bed.”

The tips of his fingers tented her dress as they crept up over her knickers, drawing a meandering line. His thumb hooked in the waistband before pressing into the soft, fleshy part of her lower belly.

“And something tells me that you, my dear, are going to look the other way if I let other women into mine.”

The world blurred, the stillness of the mausoleum threatened only by the pounding of her own heart ( _in her ears, her throat, her chest, her stomach, between her legs_ ). The part socialized to love one person, to make a life wanted to vomit, to hit him, to cry, to scream. Another part of her found itself considering his statement.

Well into the night, Claire tiptoed out of her bedroom and stole into Uncle Lamb’s library –– the one area of the palace that she had demanded not be disturbed after his death. It smelled of him –– over-sweet like pipe tobacco, clean. She dug until she found a copy of the book that had been open on Fraser’s desk earlier that week. Tolstoy. 

She read until dawn, her fingers troubling one page and her lips moving soundlessly over the words she read over and over again:

**_I wanted movement and not a calm course of existence. I wanted excitement and danger and the chance to sacrifice myself for my love. I felt in myself a superabundance of energy which found no outlet in our quiet life._ **

The ink of the words rose from the paper and melted into her, becoming a tattoo on her softest parts.

There was no outlet.


	9. Part IX: A Queen's Speech

##  **Her Royal Highness (H.R.H.)  
** **Part IX: A Queen’s Speech**

It was tradition. Upon arriving in Scotland, there was to be a cocktail hour followed by a dinner where Claire ( _as Queen_ ) would speak before the first course was served. The room would be filled with important people, naturally –– politicians and their wives, families peripherally related to her own on branches far up the family tree, some reporters, and the citizens. Among those she considered most important were the last ––  _the people_  of her country.

Typically, her speech was a short thing, crafted by a communications person in her staff –– how beautiful the country was, how her heart yearned for Scotland when she was not there, how prosperity would come to the United Kingdom and that Scotland was there alongside its sister countries as part of the deal.

Not this time, not this night.  This time, she insisted on the speech being her own in content and form. The communications person protested, but was properly chagrined as she raised a single eyebrow. “Am I not Queen?” she had asked blandly, setting the fountain pen she was using down on top of the stack of correspondence she was signing, leaning back into the belly of her chair, and crossing her legs. “Is there something wrong with the message delivered by me likewise being crafted by me?”

“Of course not, but if you would like some assistance, ma’am, I––”

Frank’s words were ringing in her head.   _Dalliance.  Those bloody calendars.  The show that would make her his more than would make him hers. His presence in Scotland through necessity, not affection._

Raising a hand, she nodded as graciously as possible. “As always, I thank you, of course, but this is one thing that I cannot delegate. Not this speech.”

_She thought of his touch –– the way she had allowed it, just to see if she could feel anything with him. It hollowed her out and made her see herself (really see herself) for the first time in ages. Floating above her body, she realized there was no tenderness there._

Offering only the most cursory of bows, the speech writer had ducked out of the room and shut the door a bit too forcefully behind himself.

_Stillness. She could not live with this stillness, the fact that did not care if Frank was with other women, just as he did not care about her being with other men._

She did not need to write the speech. She felt it singing in her veins. The usual speech would not do –– a few minutes followed by a smattering of slight applause.  It was simply a formality –– a box to check before a meal was served.

This time it would be different. This much she knew.

And now here they were.

 _Scotland_.

Dressed what felt like a million layers of draped, fizzy fabric, Claire ran a hand over the three rows of jewels and tiaras that had been chosen for her. There was an admitted beauty in the pieces, despite the excess that she found fundamentally distasteful.

“The topaz would bring out your eyes,” Frank said mildly from beside her. He was straightening the lapels of his jacket and fastening his shirtsleeves with onyx cufflinks. Ones that she had purchased.  She looked in the mirror and caught his eye, reaching for the sapphire earrings, not the topaz.

“Contrast does a better job of bringing out my eyes.”  Frank made a small sound that was at once of disagreement and resignation.

“Let me help?” he asked as she picked up the bracelet that matched the earrings, taking a single step towards her.  The click of the clasp beneath her fingertips stopped him. “Are you feeling well tonight, Claire? You are acting very…  _strange_.”

“Am I?” The distance in her voice surprised even her.  She had no interest in him  _understanding_  her, of letting him in.

The night before had proven that to her –– the test she gave him ( _failed_ ), the way he had touched her ( _without chemistry, cold and empty_ ), the plan he had put into action to make her his trophy ( _one that she had yet to dispatch_ ).

Early in their relationship, things had been easy. Stolen touches as he opened a door.  Tea in bed from the kettle he secreted into her suite. Smuggled moments of hushed laughter, splashing Earl Grey on bedsheets before the entire world descended upon her. Late nights when she snuck down halls to join him in the visitors’ wing. Surreptitiously drafted notes lining the pockets of her robe when she made her way back ( _affections, coded promises, scribbled recitations of his dreams or timeless poetry_ ). In the mornings she had been perpetually less concerned about who saw her, fingers curling around the paper.

And when Lamb died, Frank had been the one to hold her and whisper comfort. He had joined her in the bathroom, smoothed away the creases left in her face by the tile floor. He wiped away the salty tombs that her tears constructed around each of her eyelashes.  When she had admitted, vodka drunk, that she had no family, he had hushed and kissed her full on the mouth. “ _No, that is not true_ ,” he whispered when they parted, breathless, her tears on his cheeks. “ _You have me. We have each other._ ”

So she had unraveled herself to him over the years.  Purposefully, she had shown him the parts of herself usually kept under lock and key. And he took them with what had appeared, at least then, to be great care.

But something shifted after her coronation and their engagement.

At first, it was little things.

The way he said “ _hello_ ” without looking up from his morning newspaper.  

The way he shaved with the door closed, where before he had stood with a towel at his waist, hip cocked and watching her watch him.

The way she was left wanting, seeking and never finding. Her fingers reaching for him in the night and finding only stone as he shrugged her away.

The way her fingers met only the seam of the pocket of her robe, the scraps of paper becoming few and far between.

The way his words to her became flowers wilting after a first frost.

The way “ _not tonight_ ” was his rote response on a series of nights over a number of months.

She had asked him if he loved her three times.  

The first time had been early. His response had been enthusiastic, fingers drawing her close by the back of the neck and his mouth consuming hers before she could catch a breath.  When he had pulled back, eyebrow quirked, he said, “ _Madly, my dear_.” Her heart had pounded, spiraled, and plunged as he kissed her again.

The second time, he had seemed mildly offended before saying, “ _Of course, Claire._ ” Her heart had skipped only a beat before resuming its usual rhythm. His lips had been dry on her cheek; her eyes had fluttered closed.

The third time, he had quirked an eyebrow and muttered something about how she needed not to be  _so_   _silly_.  Of all things the Queen was, silly was bound to be near the bottom of the list. She had felt nothing then –– neither surprise nor disappointment, shock nor betrayal.  _It just was_.  _And she was prepared to live with it._

Weeks later, knowing her night would be sleepless, she had gone for her first ride in  _god knew how long._

And she met  _him_.

Met  _Fraser_.

Oh  _Christ_ , that man.

He was at once a challenge and easier than anything she had ever known. He was the only one who had seen through the veneer and found her beneath it. He was the moon on a clear night and the ground in a storm.  He was unreserved in a way she longed not just to emulate, but to  _be_.  

He was worth risking it all.

She had never asked Fraser if he loved her, but she suspected at a cellular level that he was not the type of man she would have to ask. He would leave no doubt. He was nothing if not thorough and there would be no question about of his intention. She was certain that she was headed into something with him from which she could never hope to return.

She had wondered whether she was strong enough to take the risk.  But she had realized, quite acutely, that there was no risk. She wanted more –– the movement that disrupts a calm existence, excitement and danger, the mere chance to sacrifice herself for love. An outlet for the superabundance of her energy.

 _Love_.

She wanted it.

They had a sound, he’d said.  _The vibrations._

 _She wanted Fraser’s love –– to love and in return, be loved_.

The promise of that love ( _being a part of it_ ) was like a horse unbridled, exploding from behind an open gate. Its muscles taut with energy, it would find freedom in the wind that it created.

No, there was nothing that she had to give up for it.

‘ _But, but, but_ ,’ her brain had stuttered on repeat as she prepared to close the book on Frank.

The burden loving her would put on Fraser made her ache and feel wild at once. His quiet life would be disrupted so he could be along for the ride. And for what? His wings would be clipped, as hers had been.  The mere act of loving her would strip him bare of the things that blistered her belly and made her dizzy with wanting.  She had been denied the opportunity to be the architect in her own life.  She knew the same would be true for him if he were to be with her ––  _really_ be with her, body and soul, not as a fling or a dalliance ( _as Frank had put it_ ).

_Could she do that to him? Knowing what it was like. Living under glass (leaving fingerprints that someone else would wipe away) or confined to a cage (seated upon a perch and seeing the world through wire). Constantly slapping concrete walls with bloodied knuckles, screaming until raw just to be heard. Knowing what she knew, could she let Fraser unwittingly join her in that?_

For a time, she had herself convinced that she was doing him a service by holding back, keeping her feelings in check. But the very thought of him was inside of her.  He was in her lungs, mingling with her breath.  He was in her belly, drawing her tight and making her quiver for a release. A scream, a sigh, a moment with eyes closed to anything else in the universe.   _Just to be –– to be Claire, to know Jamie, to find the seam where lives knit themselves together_.

“Are you about ready? That hair is about as well coiffed as it’s going to get.”

Frank gently placed the tiara into the nest of curls pinned on top of her head. It a glittering, intricate web of diamonds and sapphires and gilding. It was heavy and she sighed, her fingers adjusting it only slightly.

“I am ready,” she said, swallowing.

This speech.

The one she wrote herself.

This speech.

This was how she would claim what was hers.

She had no plan for what she would do when her words ran out, when her conclusion was made plain to the entire room full of people.  And Frank in particular –– she would not be made to suffer as anyone’s fool, let alone his.

Standing at the door to the banquet hall, she watched him straighten his sleeves again, clear his throat.  The production he was putting on just to have some golf and notoriety was about to come to an end.  Of that much she was certain.

“Ready?” he asked, giving her a look from the corners of his eyes.

“Oh, of course.”  She hooked a single gloved hand through the arm he stretched out to her. “I am ready.”


	10. Part X: Rare

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Queen: not the meek and obedient type.

##  **Her Royal Highness (H.R.H.)  
** **Part X: Rare**

* * *

Scotland had once been Jamie Fraser’s home.

When he was young and had engrained in himself the stories about his family.  The stories stretched back through generations.  Tales about alliances and colors, loyalty and sacrifice, clan and culture.  The splitting and arching of his family tree ( _branches bearing the heavy fruits of tradition and honor_ ) had fascinated him.  The fact that he was part of one such storyinstilled in him a devotion to land and God, King and country.

But that was before.

Long before.

Before gunsmoke stole his boyhood.  When he was long and lean, his muscles built while farming with his Da, their goal to make the earth swell with bounty for sale and sustenance.  Before the war rebuilt those muscles, tortured them into a source of latent power that ached and twitched to fight, to defend.  The stories he believed before the naming of the battles he fought or their inclusion in history textbooks.  Before history took countless people he held dear without giving them a story.

Now Scotland was just a place on a map or a globe.  It not  _his_ country anymore.

The closest thing to a real home that he had was Lallybroch.

That homestead ( _in literal geographic terms, a roughly two-hour drive north and a bit to the east_ ), a singular place. The thought of it was a woolen feeling ( _a nostalgia that crept in at odd moments with little rhyme or reason, pulsing with memories long ago formed, forgotten, recalled again_ ).  The memories were tucked beneath his chin when he was in bed at night, his mind wandering and body dead tired.

 _Home_ had a beating heart and a soul in its chest.  For a long time he had neither heart nor soul.  ( _And then, and then –– a night at the stables, a touch while sitting on the lip of a fountain, a moment –– no.  He could not rehash those stories again. Enough._ )

He was in Scotland, but he was not home.

Nothing felt right in this square apartment.  Utilitarian uneven walls, flat white paint, imposter tartan curtains, and forgotten furnishings that meant nothing to nobody.  A double bed with a navy coverlet, two pillows.  A reading lamp on a small night table, an alarm clock  _(the ticking so loud that he moved to the kitchen)_.  A stiff, patterned couch with a frame that hit him in all the wrong places when he sat.  An efficiency kitchen with a hot plate, kettle, and two pairs of everything ( _pot holders, salad plates, dinner plates, glasses, mugs, knives, forks, spoons_ ).  A narrow refrigerator ( _empty_ ) that hummed ( _also too loud_ ).

‘ _Just a few weeks_ ,’ he had told himself as he pulled a dresser drawer open and dropped his still-packed duffle into it.  

It was easy to arrive at the conclusion that he need not unpack his belongings in this constricted, nondescript place.  The olive canvas bag was well acquainted with its contents.  He had carried his life in it from place to place over a series of years, never bothering to unpack.  That bag smelled of all of those places ( _the ones that wiped away his sense of country_ ).

He hung two garment bags behind his bedroom door and unzipped one –– removing the freshly laundered kilt ( _inherited from his father_ ), a crisp white shirt, maroon tie, and grey jacket and vest. His fingers worked over the fabric, remembering the first and last time he had worn it.

_Jenny’s wedding –– her ivory below-the-knee dress swishing as she rose from the stool in front of their mother’s vanity. He recalled the rush that the ceremony of donning the kilt had given him, the look in his sister’s eyes as she took his arm.  ‘I love him,’ Jenny had whispered. ‘And the fact that ye’re here… it means the world to me. Someday, I’ll stand up for ye.  The way ye’re standing up for me today.  When ye find her.’  It was as if Jenny **knew**  that everyone until that point had just been window dressing.  (Those blonde  **girls** with their thin laughter were never going to last forever.  Not Claire.  Not this royal mess in which he now found himself.)  He went to war six weeks later._

As if the kilt’s fabric could be blamed for the swell of sentimentality in the pit of his stomach, Jamie withdrew his hand and shoved it deep into his pocket.

“Get it together,” he muttered as he turned and walked to the bathroom.  He stripped and climbed into the shower, cranking the knobs all the way open. He hissed when ice cold water coursed over him, but leaned into the tile as the water warmed and finally went near scalding.

It was his second shower of the day.

 _The formal welcome dinner_.

 _The Queen’s effort to engage her staff.  A change, he understood, from her predecessors’ practice.  An attempt to be progressive._  

He snorted, turning his face into the water.  He hated it, though he could never bring himself to hate her.

 _Claire, the honey gold light of that name was one he expected never to speak again_.

She had left him standing in the stables –– his heart pounding, skin tingling, mind reeling.  He knew what she had wanted with her question ( _she asked if she should leave_ ).  She wanted his permission to  _stay_ , permission not to make the decision on her own, some indication that the things she felt were  _shared._

 _It had been within his reach_.

He had gone so far as to ask permission to kiss her.

She had granted it.  Willingly, breathless. The soft swell of her lower lip trembling as brought his hand to rest over her belly.  She gave into gravity, arching towards him ever so slightly to meet his fingertips. A long-silent instrument begging for the attention of its musician ( _the one to which it belonged_ ), not just  _someone_ to play it.

He should have done it then.

 _Kissed her_.  

Taken her lips with his and pressed her against that wall.  He should have made her see the sun, moon, stars, entire galaxies, and God himself with his mouth.  He should have kissed her like a woman who is falling ( _willfully blind and longing_ ) is meant to be kissed. Kissed by a man already in love and fully aware he is damned to a lifetime of it _._ Reverent but greedy, possessive and liberating.  He should have swallowed her sounds and breaths, one by one, and allowed them to live in his chest, just beneath the breastbone, and his stomach.

Instead he had given in to banter, their play on words.  He had allowed her mouth, pouting and ready for his, to spill flirtation instead of learning the taste of a kiss.  The missed opportunity had soured on his tongue when she left.

Standing there, bared to one another, neither of them had rank or station with bits of hay clinging to their clothing.

And then that fiancé.

_Fucking Frank Randall._

Jamie had pulled away from her, Randall’s call tearing through him. He could no longer forget any of it. Who she was. Who he was. Where they were. What it meant.  He recalled suddenly ( _mournfully_ ) the unexcavated part of him that was too honorable to be with another man’s woman.

 _No_.  He could not do it.   _Even if she wanted it.  Even if she wanted **him**._

And so Jamie had been the one to break the spell.  He did it with an uttered honorific that he knew would break her apart, rebuild her walls, grind down the very fiber of her heart.

(“ _Ma’am_.”)

In the shower, his fingers searched for something to grip.  Finding nothing, he became the type of man who smashes a fist into a wall.  With a sickening crunch, his hand rebounded.

“God dammit,” he muttered, opening his fist and inspecting his knuckles ( _split at the seams, leaking_ ). For what felt like centuries, he watched the blood trickle down his forearm, pool at his feet, and swirl down the drain.  Once the leak of blood had all but stopped, he gave himself one final directive before getting out of the shower to dress: “Pull it together for just a night, Fraser. One night and it’ll be over.”

A car brought him from his apartment at the perimeter of the grounds to the palace entrance.  The room where the dinner was to be held was resplendent.  Heather mixed with cabbage roses, thistle tied into sprigs resting at each place setting.  Through crystal, candlelight painted a million technicolor constellations on the walls.  Wine and champagne flowed freely.  At least three dozen place settings lined either side of a banquet table.  Her assigned spot was easy to identify –– a seatback taller than the rest, centered and facing into the room.

The high-ranking members of the Queen’s staff were already there ( _emissaries to the various ministries, her administrative staff, the advisors whose opinions she oftentimes detested_ ), milling about.  Taking a seat, he wondered if perhaps he should just walk away.  From this dinner.  From everything. Get that unpacked duffle and those garment bags, leave his toothbrush, and make his way to Lallybroch.  No note.  No notice.  Jenny would never ask what happened to the job.  He would find a niche there at home, a place to call his own. He would live in that fucking cave at the edge of the estate if he had to.  

Maybe someday he could reclaim this country ( _Scotland_ ) as his own and call it a home once more.

Ice lined his veins, his arteries, the chambers of his heart.

_Claire.  Those nights in the stables that were probably already at their end._

‘ _I canna see ye_ ,’ he thought as her entrance was announced.  But he rose, eyes focusing on the slight flutter of wind lifting one of the curtains.  He tried to focus not on her entrance, but on whether he found it strange that the windows were open, that the room was not stale and that there was air to breathe.

In his peripheral vision, he saw her cast a glance down the table. Perhaps she was just taking in everyone in attendance.  

He could not entertain the notion that she was looking for him, searching down the line of faces for one that was too familiar.  It hurt too much.

He made a fist, the ache of the skin stretching over the battered knuckles of his left hand somehow fortifying him.

_She was not Claire anymore.  Perhaps she had never even been his.  He would neither run nor fight.  He would just be._

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

Fraser rose when she entered. He observed all of the necessary formalities, but he assiduously avoided looking at her.  She could not keep her eyes from him, watching him angle his body to insinuate himself into the conversation next to him. He was  _too focused_.

A first course.  She did not touch her food, instead letting almost syrupy-thick wine warm her from the inside. Frank’s voice melted into nothing more than a tenor murmur next to her. When he laughed, a sort of booming guffaw, she pressed the pad of her thumb into the tines on her oyster fork and swallowed hard.

 _Just a look_.  It was all she wanted, all she needed.

But after a time, though, she knew that she would not collect so much as a glance from Fraser.

Though the absence of his acknowledgment smoldered like a hot coal in the pit of her stomach, she could hardly blame him.

The mere memory of those last ( _lost_ ) moments in the stables came to mind and colored her cheeks.

_Maybe she was too late._

( _A lifetime of hesitancy.  Her Uncle Lamb holding the seat of her bicycle, blood trickling over knobby knees and catching in the pale hairs along the concave furrow of her shins._ _The warmth of his broad fingers under her arms as he brought her to her feet._ ‘ _You will never know if you do not try, Claire.’  The great gulp of air she took before she swore an oath to govern the peoples of the Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the Union of South Africa, Pakistan, and Ceylon.  All of her possessions and other territories.  A solemn promise made over the skipping in her voice –– to maintain the Church of England, work in accord with the Gospel_.  _The tremor of her lips as she kissed the Bible, her whispered encouragement to her hand, directing it to move as she signed the Oath._ )

Without preamble, Claire rose to her feet and reached for her glass. Frank looked up at her, eyes questioning as he reached for her hand, saying, “Darling?”

She pulled herself just out of his reach, unable to spare even a look at him.

She had expected her heart to pound, her palms to sweat, her stomach to clench.   _Something_ at the prospect of what she was about to do. But for the first time in months, she was  _calm_.  All the way down to the core of her existence.

_It was time._

She had signed the Oath with hesitant fingers trembling around the pen. She had kissed the worn leather cover of the Bible with unsure lips.  She had climbed back onto that bicycle with a shiver crawling up her spine and goosebumps erupting along her arms.  

But she was stock still now, the store of words in her belly confident.  Her heart seemed to have stopped and time had slowed.  She was everywhere and nowhere at once.

_She would not hesitate this time._

“I am so grateful that everyone was able to gather here for this, our first night in Scotland.  These dinners are an opportunity for me to express my gratitude for another year of your service, your discretion and your dedication.  I admit, my remarks this evening are a bit unorthodox.  My Uncle Lambert… the King… always told me to speak from the heart.  To let truth be the unassailable guiding light in my life.  With truth, he said, comes light.”

She swallowed, inhaled and exhaled.  Fraser still had not looked at her.In her peripheral vision, Frank was picking a string out of the cuffed hem of his uniform.  She breathed in again, squaring her shoulders.

“When I became Queen, I had certain notions about what this life would be like.  Of course, growing up I had a strong sense of duty and understood the importance of the role of the sovereign.  It was instilled in me by my parents, my grandparents, and the King.  Despite knowing all of these great people, loving them, one important lesson was lost on me until recently.  They were all human. Fallible.  They had needs.  They were searching for something rare.”

She looked towards Fraser, who was looking at her for the first time.  His face was impassive, but from the corner of her eye she saw the flicker of his hand tapping on the table.  

 _It was his tell.  She had him._ ‘ _Watch_ ,’ her mind, heart, and guts begged.  

For a moment, her mouth fell silent and her tongue went heavy, but then she continued.  “They were looking for the rare thing that it is to love and be loved. It is rarer still, to be in this position and to have the blessing of having a connection with another.  One who sees through the haze of position and can connect to your heart… that bond is profound and infinite.”

 _Fraser was watching.  He was listening_.

“I am Queen.  I am not immune from the need for something rare, to feel something greater than me.”

Frank reached for her again and she shook her head, setting her glass down on the table.  She looked at him, no longer searching for a sign.  _She knew_.

“I was convinced that my status meant that I would never find that kind of love.  The rare love of my parents for each other, or my grandparents. That I would never uncover my path.  The path that leads to someone who forms the parts of me that the public will never see, should never see.  To push aside the veil that comes with my position.  To be that rare thing.  And this man…”

Her gaze flicked to Fraser once more before she turned back to Frank.

“This man is not the person who will do that.  There is nothing rare in his admiration of my status or his esteem for the  _perks_ of being with me.”

“ _Claire_ ,” Frank said, voice pitched low and warning.  A quiet murmur had broken out at the far ends of the tables. “I must apologize, everyone.  She is not well.”

“I can assure you that I am quite alright.”  Her hand found the back of Frank’s neck.  “What was it that you said last night? That you were certain you could bring another woman––”

––her hand slipped across Frank’s upper back, moving to cup his shoulder––

“into my bed without upsetting the balance of our lives? That this was an  _arrangement_?”

For the first time since she had known him, Frank appeared well and truly stunned.

“See, I am sure this is all very unsavory and not royal to all of you, but I refuse to live a lie for the sake of convenience.  I refuse to live a lie in the interest of avoiding the scandal of a broken engagement.”

She cast a glance down one end of the table and then to the other.  Fraser had his head bowed now; his hands were nowhere in sight. The two men seated on either side of him were leaning towards one another, the hushed garble of their discussion indecipherable.

“Everyone knows the history of my family and the histories of the families before mine that ruled this empire. There was a time where the Crown stood for such goings on. Affairs and mistresses.  Other things of the like.”

She gave Frank’s shoulder the slightest squeeze.

“ _Dalliances_.”  Lifting her hand, she reached for her champagne flute with a smile and tilt of her head. “I am certain that none of you believed that you would be in for  _this_ kind of toast this evening. It is a curious one, to be sure.”

Claire lifted the flute, suddenly feeling the bubbles darting along the glass all the way down in her belly.

“But I must say, that from here on out, I promise to you that I intend not to settle, not to stop searching for something rare. Not to bind myself to notions of  _tradition_ or  _propriety_ in a way that mean I can only give one part of myself while denying myself humanity.  _That_ is how I can best serve you and the people I pledged my life to lead.”

A single, mirthless voice said “ _here here_ ” as she drained the glass.  

Leaning close to Frank’s ear, Claire hissed, “You have thirty minutes to get yourself and your shit out of my house or I will have it all burned as you are escorted from the premises by armed guards.”

Fraser was watching her, intently cataloging her every move.  The tilt of her head towards him was nearly imperceptible.  No one would see it but him, she was sure.  His face remained still, his hands unseen, as he tilted his head back at her.  And when Claire turned from him, the room was silent but for the reverberating slap of her heels on hardwood as she walked away.


	11. Part XI: Watched

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The aftermath of the Queen's Speech.

##  **Her Royal Highness (H.R.H.)  
Part XI: Watched**

Jamie Fraser was sure that he was breaking at least a dozen laws and workplace protocols by slipping out of the banquet hall, past a series of closed doors, and into the wing of the palace that contained the Queen’s private living quarters.  But in that moment, buzzing from the exhilaration of her speech and that faint tip of her head, he would have happily spent a night or two ( _or a hundred_ ) in some damp, drafty Scottish jail. If only to say that he had  _tried_.

With a furtive look over his shoulder, he slowed his walk and began to test doorknobs.  He searched for the slivers of light that indicated the existence of life behind closed doors.  

He had collected the moments in which she was stripped bare ( _her admission that she wanted to touch him_ ), felt the vibration filling his chest brought about by the mere nearness of her ( _the unique markers of their time together_ ), and catalogued one of her breathy admissions ( _that she wanted his kiss, but only if he did it properly_ ).

 _He needed more._    _Still.  Even more so now having heard her address a room full of people about finding something rare._

He muttered to himself, his palms beginning to sweat as the end of the hallway came into sight.

Curses ( _ifrinn)._  Prayers ( _the ones he only said when he was in a bind, recalled from childhood_ ).  

_But still more locked doors, more silence, unrelenting darkness._

In the end, Claire was tucked away at the end of the hall.  Hidden in a room with the door partly ajar. He stood, grasping the doorframe and watching her, the relief of having found her making him woozy.  

The notion occurred to him that it felt as though at least a year had passed since the lost moment they shared in the stables.  

_An opportunity that misfired.  A faltering separation that felt like an untimely goodbye._

He had not  _really_  seen her since then.

Of course, he had just  _seen_  her at the dinner.  He had played witness to her dressing down of Frank Randall and the finale of the part of her life that contained her engagement. Her speech, delivered to a room full of people, had been layered.  Despite the presence of an audience, her confessions had been deeply personal ( _as if she unzipped her own skin at the centerline and crawled out of herself, glowing_ ).  It had been raw in a way that he was not sure anyone else there had grasped.  But it had also been a message. An entreaty to him ( _James Alexander Malcolm MacKenzie Fraser_ ) to have  _hope_.  That all was not lost in the stable hay.  That what it was between them had not dissolved into daylight at their parting.  The message had dispatched with the slight tilt of her chin.  In acknowledgment of its receipt, he tilted his head back.  

And the change in her face ( _the firmness in the set of her lips slipping, the relief of exhaling a long-held breath_ ) had been remarkable.  That softness in her expression, as fleeting as it had been, had rekindled in him a dream that he had placed on a shelf in the back of his mind.

_Her.   Him.  Them._

And then there she was in that dark room at the end of the hall.

And Christ was she ever beautiful –– her dark head bowed just slightly, arms spread wide to brace herself against the window sill, shoes abandoned and one bare foot peeking out from beneath her dress. Her back arched as she inhaled.  The sound she made was deep, from her belly.

_Relief tempered by exhaustion._

He was made a voyeur by the mere fact that he was frozen –– yearning to keep this moment for himself forever.

She rose to full height, eyes affixed on some unidentified point outside the window and beyond the horizon.  She removed her rings, the frothy blushed champagne layers of her dress whispering over one another as she moved.

Every meaningless platitude ( _love will overcome_ ) and canned speech ( _an expression of love_ )that he had written in his head fell away.  

 _Claire_.   _Just Claire_.

One ring and then the other.

She turned from the window just slightly as she grimaced, twisting the ring on her left ring finger.  

 _The newspapers had a field day when the Queen (_ ** _the People’s Accidental Queen_** )  _deigned to wear a_ ** _ring_** _upon her engagement to Frank Randall.  Royals did not_ ** _belong_** _to someone, the papers cried, with photographs of the ring peppering printing after printing.  Now those some newspapers would undoubtedly have a tantrum in equal measure over the fact that she no longer wore that ring.  They would smear her –– the end of an engagement, the flippant and foolish Queen_.  

Something told him that she no longer cared.

Her profile was illuminated with a halo of bluish silver –– her lower lip tucked between her teeth and her brow furrowed.

_If there were words to describe her, he could not call them to mind in any language he knew._

_English.  Gaelic.  French.  Russian._

_All of the pre-packaged sentiments with their practiced syllables were inadequate for her._

“Fuck,” she muttered.  Something about her muttered profanity made him smile.   She was unguarded, unaware.  She was just  _being_.

The ring finally slipping over her knuckle and off her finger, landing on the windowsill with a sharp clang.  She sighed, turning back to face out of the window, her narrow shoulders folding in as she bowed her head again.

“Claire?” he started.

He had expected her to to startle ( _a small jump, a profane expression_ ) at his unannounced appearance.  Instead, she turned with wide eyes and whispered, “ _Fraser.”_

A moment and then another.  

He did not wait for an invitation before stepping into the room and drawing the door closed behind him.

“Jamie,” she said quietly, taking a single step towards him, pausing, and then taking another step.  “I…” Her voice faded away, her lips melting into the slightest of smiles. “You  _came_.”

“Of course I came.”  

They each took another step closer, closing the space between them.   He was close enough to see the lift of the tiny hairs on her forearms, the goosebumps, the rise of the delicate lines of her collarbones as she attempted to control her breathing, the layers of transparent fabric that laid one over another just just so that her dress was not sheer.  

“I wanted you to come,” she confessed.

“I kent ye did.”

“I was worried that it was too late. That I had spoiled everything.  That I––”

( _he interrupted her_ ––  _Claire, not the Queen_ ) ––

“and it’s no’ too late.”

It was a balm on her worry, but it did nothing to slow her pounding heart or even her breathing.  Even if she had wanted to, she no longer had any capacity to choose to control herself around him.  She had given that up with her confession, with her decision to rededicate ( _or to dedicate anew_ )herself to a life beyond the gilt cage in which her days had been structured by someone else on her behalf.

Suddenly, she needed him to know.  To lay herself bare to him –– the messy parts and all.  “The nights we have spent together have changed me.   _Fundamentally_.”

“Aye.  As they have me,” he responded quietly, fingers drumming a loose rhythm against his thigh.  

 _To touch her, not to touch her_.   _A wispy tendril that had loosened itself from her perfectly coiffed updo, hovering just over her temple.  It curled around her face.  The deep v of her dress ending between her breasts.  A touch to interrupt the soft, pale skin of her mostly bared back.  Testing the fluttering, diaphanous fabric covering her shoulders and arms. To find that her skin was his addiction, a habit to take up and let consume hime._

“ _You_  have changed me.  Or perhaps you gave me the push I needed to find and prioritize certain parts of me.”

 _‘Touch her, you fool,’_ his mind directed him.

He reached for the curl.Claire’s breath hitched, her breasts rising just slightly as she inhaled.  _One. Two._ She held the breath in her lungs until it burned.  _Three.  Four._ His fingers moved down her jaw and she put her tiny fists to his waist, balling into the fabric of his kilt and drawing him closer.  He resisted the urge to tell her that she was the most beautiful woman that he had ever seen.

Claire drew another breath and another, quivering as she fought the urge to turn into James Fraser’s hand, to let her eyes close and kiss his palm.  “I did what I did, said what I said, not for you, but for  _us_.”  

 _A pause, her eyes on his_.  _A breath and another. The vibration. It was not even close to last in the litany of admissions she had stored for this moment.  She was stripping herself bare for him._

“I need to know what it is between us, Jamie.  I have never…”  Her fingers moved up his hip and she laid her palms flat against his stomach.  “I have never felt this way before.  And waiting here. Wondering if you would want me…”

“Would I want ye?”  It came from his lips in a near bark, his surprise palpable.  Her eyes widened, earnest and searching.

“Yes.”

“Claire, I dinna want ye.  I  _need_ ye.  I’ve never  _needed_ anyone before.”

She licked her lips and he saw her tears swell along her lower lash line.  “It is not too late, then?”  

In her adult life, her voice had never been as small as it was then.  The question placed her dreams in the palm of his hand. ( _Those did not belong anywhere else, to anybody else; they were home now._ )  

He drew a breath at her question.  He smiled with his answer.  “No, it isna too late, and I’d still verra much like to kiss ye.”  

Her reactions to his admission filled pages in a book ( _a memoir with chapters yet to be written_ ) –– the tremble of her lips, the hitch in her breath, the way her eyes took on a glassy, aroused sheen. Light swirled like a whirlpool in her mind.  

“Do it properly,” she mumbled, a slight smile touching her lips at the recreation of the moment in the stables.  The words had run through her head a million times –– her response in the stables.  They had run through his head at least as many.

His tongue was slow, sweeping his lower lip as his eyes focused on the top of her head.  At his touch ( _an unexpected brush of fingertips over the backs of the hands that she had knotted into the front of his shirt_ ), she let loose a quiet sigh and tilted her head to the side. Anticipating his mouth.  A ghosted touch traveled over her narrow wrists, bare arms, the sloped curve of her shoulders, her throat, and jaw.  

“This, though, willna do.” Her head pitched to the right as he removed the first pin from the careful assemblage of her chignon.  The pin fell to the floor with a hollow ping.  Her eyes fluttered closed, the moment blurring and becoming dreamlike.  When he at least drew the lynchpin of the chignon, her hair tumbled down over her shoulders.  “ _Mo nighean donn_.”  

“What?” she slurred, her eyes becoming slits just to look at him.

He captured a single loose curl and pushed it over her shoulder.  “Basically it means ‘my brown-haired lass.’”

His gaze, blue and intent, made her skin feel too small to contain the feeling in her belly. He had peeled clean away the outermost protective layer of herself.  

 _Armor, discarded to nothing_.   _He would be her protection now, covering the parts of her that were vulnerable._

Disconcerted, she whispered, “I have always thought it was a dull color brown.  My mom, my sister, my uncle… they were so  _blonde_.”

“Not dull at all.  Like the water in a burn.”  Warm, his touch expanded across the bare skin of her upper back, drawing goosebumps to the surface everywhere.  His head tilted ever so slightly to the side, fingers tangling in the curls at the nape of her neck.  “Where it ruffles over the stones.  Dark in the wavy spots, but with bits of auburn where the moonlight catches it.”  

Her chin dipped ever so slightly, but he captured it between his thumb and forefinger.

Guiding her gaze back, he softly said, “Look at me.”

And she did.  

For the first time, they were both entirely unguarded and unburdened.  He could  _see her then_.  Her eyes were sweet, fragrant honeycomb cutting through biting, perfectly aged, oaky whisky. An amber pool in which he would gladly drown.  

Unsayable things came to him.  Things that he worried would frighten her off. ( _Now, forever, us, a dhia. Mo chridhe, my lass, my love, my life_.)

Instead of speaking the endearments into existence, he allowed his lips to curve up.   _A smile_.  “In about a moment’s time, ye ken that we’ll no’ be able to go back to the way things were, Claire.”

 _The tremble in her lip. The little twitch at the corner of her mouth. The dart of pink tongue as she drew an anticipatory breath._    _The gentle arch of her body towards him._

“Yes, Jamie.  I know.”

_His name.  It was as though he had never heard it before he heard it in that moment.  The sweet cadence of her voice massaged it until it became neither a name nor a word, but a calling._

She continued, “I know, and I need never to go back there.”

It was as though the very crust of the earth vibrated beneath their feet then.  

His fingers moved to the intricate lines of her delicate tiara as she readjusted just enough to hold onto his hips.  Diamonds and sapphires caught light as he brought his fingers beneath the circlet in her hair. In the low light, prismatic shapes skipped and fell over wallpaper, danced down the front of her dress, and juddered over the narrow sliver of carpet between their feet.  

She stepped forward just enough, her sigh was quiet and the catch in her breath signaling their joint tumble over the precipice.  In his guts, he wondered if he was about to stop breathing altogether at the sight of her.  Like she needed air, she needed  _his_ acknowledgment that things were going to be different. A huskiness overtook her voice as she recognized again the solemnity of the moment with a mumbled, “Of course  _you_ know that this will change everything, too, Jamie.”

“Aye, I ken, but I need it, too. Just as ye said.  I canna go back to the way things were.”  

And with that, he lifted the tiara fully from the tangle of her curls.  His removal of the weight of it allowed her to take her first fully-formed breath of the evening.  Eyes raked down her body as she took the tiara from him, discarding it to the floor.

“I’ve heard every word ye said tonight, Claire…”  His voice trailed off, though he willed himself to speak again.  “And when I kiss kiss ye, ken that I’m kissing  _you_.   _Not_  the Queen.”

“Good.”  

Neither would ever be able to identify who finally closed the gap.  It was as it was meant to be. Neither made the choice.  The  _universe_  did.  

Bodies connected, his belly was warm against hers.  The seam of them ( _the soft curve of her against the hard line of him_ ) drew them closer than they had been before.  The slight press of his arousal against her pinked her cheeks a glorious, springtime blossom of a color.  He was unabashed, prepared for her to know everything of him.  Everything that she made him feel –– in his heart, his head, his body.  He tested the color with his fingers, basking in her reaction to him.  

“I’m in love wi’ ye, Claire. Madly.”

He inhabited her space entirely, his hand on the fabric over her hip and his thumb inadvertently finding the soft swell of flesh there.  The tip of his nose ran along her cheekbone and she felt everything but the mingling heat of their bodies dematerialize.  On the tail end of a sharp breath, she confided, “I am in love with you, too.  Irrevocably so.”

His left hand found her cheek, his wide palm along her jawline, angling her and urging her towards him.

_Skin like pearl._

Her eyes closed, though she wanted to watch him.  He was drinking her in, a storm darkening his eyes. She wanted to memorize every moment.

After only a shared breath more, her lips parted and his mouth was on hers. At first, the touch of his lips was a mere nuzzle.  ( _Enough that she recognized that the wine on his lips and his tongue was the same that lingered on her own palate.  Enough that her entire body responded to him._ )

Rising onto tiptoes, her fingers curled into fabric and her body pressed into the hard curve of his chest.

 _Up, up, up_.

Her calves ached as she arched herself higher as his hand found its way to her lower back, drawing her closer and closer. His mouth moved with certainty, as though it had been constructed from his flesh solely to kiss her.

She needed more of him.

_His taste.  His breath.  His touch.  His reactions._

She was alive and under a spell.

 _Needy, desperate.  Dwelling in the conflagration.  Burning, piercing need_.   _Eternal_.

She became liquid against him at the first swipe of his tongue –– sure, firm.  Her heart went mad in her chest and she only faintly recognized the roar of thunder somewhere far in the distance.  The sound that came from him met the thunder, magnified it, and made her belly clench.  He tasted like rain that had not yet fallen and an entire future of doors to open.   _Together_.

Her fingers found the soft skin beneath his jaw, holding his face gently as he eased back only slightly.  

When she inhaled she felt at once young and ancient.

 _Carefree but knowing.  Senseless and conscious of everything (all of his breaths and the guttural sound as he slows the kiss, the hammering of their pulses like the flicker of hummingbird wings just beneath the surface)_.

A moan rose in her, vibrating into the recesses of his mouth.  He smiled again, mouth slowing as it curved against hers. Flat and unyielding, his tongue traveled one final time over hers.  When their lips separated with a soft, wet smack, she kept her eyes closed.  She could not force them to open.  Frozen in place, she was woozy and painfully aching with the need for  _more_.  

 _To kiss him again. To have his hands explore with her dress and his kilt puddled at their feet_.

“Ye look like ye’ve been stung by a bee,” he whispered before drawing her lower lip into his mouth.  _She would take more and more still._

And when they parted for the night with a promise to meet the next evening at the stables, she realized that the universe had been made for their eyes alone.


	12. Part XII: A Day’s Anticipation

##  **Her Royal Highness (H.R.H.)  
Part XII: A Day’s Anticipation**

Though she was  _present_ for the first time in recent memory, it was like Claire was absent from her own life.

In the natural lulls of conversations, she found herself touching her mouth as though she were awed by its mere existence.

( _Those fingers that had learned the precise messiness of the curls at Fraser’s nape. That mouth that had been so thoroughly kissed._ )

In the quiet moments between meetings and briefings, she recalled in vivid, blushing detail the dreams that had woken her.

( _The soundest sleep she had in months –– a floating into dreams, landing in technicolor moments never lived and perhaps never to be.  Jarring herself awake, panting and drenched with sweat in her bed, right hand cupping right breast and left scrabbling for a disappointingly absent head of curls between her thighs.  Arching against her sheets, a slick aching that quickly receded into an unfulfilled promise as she reached for the lamp on her bedside table._ )

Her attention became a meandering thing.  

Someone would clear a throat, tap the table, or inquire “ _ma’am?_ ” as her eyes focused on something and nothing at once. ( _The needlepoint cushion that had been perched on her sitting room chair since before her uncle became king. A single syllable in a familiar word written in all capital letters on the corner of an envelope. The tip of a branch squeaking a melody out against a pane of glass._ )

No one asked questions of her.

They did not dare, but they thought knew the source of her distraction, the cause of the far-off look in her eyes.

_A broken engagement.  A disastrous state dinner.  Frank Randall.  A fixture in her life no more._

She contented herself in their erroneous speculations. She did not squander her time on correcting the course of their wandering minds or quelling the inevitable gossip mongering that danced in quiet corners, oddly-placed cupboards, and markedly private staff quarters.  

Fraser was a secret known only to her, the thrill of his mere existence ( _his willingness to give himself over to her_ )fluttering in the chambers of her heart.  It dwelled there, untold, beneath stratum of skin and bone, growing and taking shape.  Her heart was the full moon, white and blemished grey with the shapes of a face, beating lazily in her chest.

“Just a few more, ma’am,” an attendant said apologetically, sliding a final small stack of letters for her signature across the table.

She offered again and again the same apologetic smile, allowing these nameless people their mad speculations.

_The Queen gone unhinged._

She focused on time.

The hands on the clock seemed to toddle along with no sense of urgency.  The conversation between the courses of her evening meal droned on and on ( _about this and that, nothing in particular that required her input, just polites nod of acknowledgment or good humored laughs_ ).  While she had always found the formality of meals with company tedious, it was even more so that evening.  Her mind was elsewhere –– vested in her evening plan.  

And when she was finished eating and had bid her guests a good evening, she retreated to her suite of rooms where she could shut out their chatter and their faraway looks.

_An hour until she would see him again._

Giddy on nothing more than thought and memory, she exhaled her relief against the door.  She ran through a not insubstantial sampling of the night’s possibilities.  Only the press of her forehead into the wood, her fingers curling around the ornate door knob kept her from floating off the face of the earth.  After a moment, mind still rapidly cataloguing some of what they may get up to that evening ( _from ordinary to downright lascivious_ ), she peeled herself free from the door and made her way to her dressing room.

Selecting something to wear was a non-issue.  

_Black sweater.  Black riding pants and boots.  A scarf._

Something told her that she could toddle down the slope to the stables in a gunny sack dress and be just perfectly well received by Fraser.

She stripped the day’s boring dress off ( _grey, tweed, relatively shapeless without a belt_ ) and allowed it pool at her feet. She shed her slip.  Down to her underthings, she studied herself in the floor-length mirror. The plain nude briefs with their high waist, scalloped elastic, and little satin bow that was frozen, skewed sideways someway above her navel were hardly the thing of a lad’s magazine.  The nondescript flesh-colored brassiere lifted her breasts, separated them into satin-contained globes with unnaturally rounded peaks would never have been material for a clandestine photograph sent by a woman to her man on the frontlines.  No soldier would hold that photograph, creased and worn at the edges, in his back pocket  

Despite this, turning sideways with her head tilted, she realized that Fraser made her feel beautiful.  Her eyes did not stray from her reflection as she undid the clasp of her bra and let it down her arms easily.  She was not what one would call  _self conscious_.  As a general matter, she had few complaints about her figure.  She rather liked the soft flare from her waist down to her hips.  She could appreciate the teardrop weight of her naked breasts, the turned up silhouette of her puffy pink nipples, and the way those same nipples tightened into hard ridges when she was aroused.

No.  She was  _alright_.   _Perhaps even better than_.

And Fraser looked at her like no other man had before.  _Oh Christ did his eyes make themselves at home on her._

She had been the subject of lust.  ( _Boys at school, with their fumbling hands and panting, humid mouths. Their unpracticed hips and their adolescent need for harder, faster, more mechanical thrusting.  Frank, with his matter-of-fact appraisals and clinical mutterings about the warmth of her, the firm way he drove into her that was never unpleasant, but lacked spark_.)

She had been the subject of inspection.  ( _Papers critiquing this hairstyle, that dress, or the jewels chosen for her on a given occasion.  An entire country’s citizenry taking the prepackaged parts of their Queen in at public functions, consuming her and going back to their lives when the pageant of her entrance and exit was over_.)

She had been the subject of curiosities.  ( _Teachers whispering behind the girls’ dormitories over shared cigarettes. Their discussions about the gangly legs and frizzy hair of the fourth in line to the throne, their breath and smoke mingling into an acrid cloud that hung on their winter coats and the white, half-moon collars that peeked out of tailored dresses.  Parents of her classmates making inquiries that wound their way back to her –– wanting to know what Her Royal Highness Claire Elizabeth’s holiday plans were, whether the family ever invited outsiders to the palace for weekend breaks, if the King was a gad about town with a lady in each postal code or if he was a homosexual.)_

But Fraser had made her feel something different.

Not lusted after, inspected, or unusual.

She was more than a tiara or a dress.  

She was entitled to honor separate from her title and ancestry.

Under his gaze, she felt transcendent, strong.  Infinitely complex, but somehow simple.  Cherished.

_“My good luck,” he had muttered as they parted the night before. Tapping touches along her collarbones left traces on her more intimate than the kiss that he had given her (that they had_ **_shared_ ** _).  She had studied the firm, curved bone of his thumb beneath her fingers as she guided his hand lower to rest between her breasts.  Concluding, he whispered, “No. Actually, it’s more than good luck.”_

She scrubbed in the shower.  Shaved and trimmed.  In front of the mirror she combed her hair with her fingers, dabbed perfume on her pulse points. She inspected her teeth at close range in the mirror for bits of spinach salad, breathed into her cupped hand and sniffed.  She brushed.  Flossed.  She swished with a minty rinse, shivering as it flowed between the tight spaces of her teeth and over her tongue.  Looked again.  Sighed, contented for the moment.

Walking to the stables, her eyes memorized the ground whipping below her feet and her teeth worried her lower lip.

_The anticipation was almost over._

She had been in these stables only a few times.  They were different than the ones back in London.  Smaller, narrower, a little claustrophobic, harshly lit.  

Fraser was at the end of the line, leaning on his elbows against the metal bars that gated the last stall.  He was whispering  _something_  low and slow, head tilted to the side.

Pausing, Claire eased the door closed behind her just to listen.

 _Gaelic_.  

She knew that much.  

It was beautiful.  

Lyrical almost, with a rhythm that sounded almost supernatural to her ears.  

Though she could not catch and comprehend even a few of the words that he spoke, she could feel the history in each and the storied cadence of his speech.  The rise.  The fall.  The places where he drew breath and smiled at whatever charge was at home in that last stall.  

It was as though the language was a rite passed down ( _gifted_ ) to him as an ancestral right.

She caught her breath when he tilted his head to look at her and say, “Ye ken that ye can come to me, Sassenach.”

Her heart skipped a beat and she strode across the stables, the anticipation of the day paling in comparison to the sudden need to be next to him.  She chanced a glance into each of the stalls as she passed.  Fraser had a lean ( _but exquisite_ ) equine crew in Scotland.  Just enough for riding about the grounds and a little showmanship with a carriage ( _if necessary_ ). Claire drew up beside him, feeling a flush rise in her chest.  _The way he looked at her –– like he was drawing her into an embrace, telepathically drawing all of her secrets, accepting her notwithstanding the ugliness of some of them_.  

The way he kept his eyes open ( _sparkling, searching_ ) as he leaned in to kiss her sent her reeling.

It was as though nothing was more elemental than the two of them kissing.  

That after their first ( _stolen the night before, prolonged and made into a memory_ ), it had become an innate part of them to meet with their lips.

She was falling –– like the moment after catching her toe, when she knew she would fall, but could not stop the forward momentum. The pout of his lips meeting hers was an unexpected catch.  His fingers along the periphery, swiping back an errant curl from her cheek, the soft landing.

_Natural._

_This was natural._

By all accounts it was a chaste kiss, but it ignited her, burned her insides.

And when Fraser pulled back, eyes still open and lips turned in the most self-satisfied little smirk she had ever seen, she realized that she was feeling something for the first time.

 _Wanting_.

“Were ye planning to say ‘hello’ to me?” Fraser asked after a careful assessment of her face.  She did not know when his hand had found her side, but his fingers opened along the curve of her waist and drew her closer.  The flush returned to her cheeks as she angled herself up towards him. He was intent in his perusal of her, that bloody smirk turning into a snack.

Other than an unconscious, small squeak she had no time to react when he pecked her on the lips again. She situated the toe of her boots between his, noting in an absent kind of way the small scuff on the left toe of his.  Quietly, she whispered, “Hello.”

“ _Hello_ ,” he echoed, voice even lower.  He absolutely towered over her.  “Ye ken that I’ve been thinkin’ of that kiss for the last twenty-four hours?”

“Oh?”

“Aye, the delicious wee sounds that ye make, the taste of ye.  Though, ye were no’ so minty last night.”

“Nor were you.   _Mouthwash_.  I’d venture a guess that you also partook this evening.”  She raised a quizzical eyebrow as she touched his jawline.  There was a small amount of stubble there –– perhaps he hadn’t shaved since the day before.  

( _She realized that she wanted to know how long it took him to grow in the first, pencil-shaded sketch of a beard.  The type of stubble that he had right now.  A day?  An afternoon?  She wondered what his face would feel like on a Sunday morning if he came home from work on a Friday and did not shave over the weekend.  She wondered what it would feel like to wake next to him –– under him, his knee urging her legs apart –– in some narrow postage stamp of a post-war home on the outskirts of London on that Sunday morning.  To be teased by him, kissed with abandon, left aching by him.  To forget to lament the coming of a Monday because Sunday was a day reserved for one another, not for worrying._ )

“I had to wash away the taste of the sausage roll that I had for lunch,” he admitted, the normalcy of the conversation striking her.

“Presumptuous, then, are you, Fraser?”

“Oh, aye, and in good company, it appears.”  His thumb ran along her lower lip before he dropped his hands and turned back to the stall.  He was close enough to her that she could feel the warmth of him, the tang of a day’s hard work.  Draping his arms over the stall and bringing one boot up onto a rung of the gate, he nodded towards the horse.  “This is Thistle.”

Mirroring his pose, Claire really looked at the dappled grey mare there for the first time since arriving in the stables. Brimstone would own her heart forever, but Thistle became a quick, close second.  

“She’s new,” Fraser explained. “Just arrived this morning.”

“She’s a pretty girl,” Claire whispered, stepping onto the lowest rung of the gate into the stall.  She felt a steadying hand on her waist, the expanse of a firm forearm against her lower back, the warmth radiating from his flank.  

“Lass.”

“Pardon?” Claire asked, a little taken aback.

“She’s a  _lass_ , not a  _girl_.  Ye’re in  _Scotland_ now.”  The smirk was back and she wanted to pull him down to the floor of the bloody stables and learn what his throat tasted like, the dip between his collarbones, the swollen curve of his pecs towards one another.  She was shaken from the fantasy when Fraser reached into his pocket, produced some soft, slightly browned apple slices.  “Saved these for ye to have wi’ her.”

Claire accepted them, taking another step up so she was all the way on the gate.  Holding them forward, she whispered softly.  Fraser chuckled as she drew in a sharp breath when Thistle ambled to the gate and gave a great snort.  The soft, gentle brush of Thistle’s soft, shapeless lips on her hand made her sigh.

“She’s new.  She’s no’ goin’ to be fond of a ride, but a walk, maybe?”

Wiping her spit-slicked hands on her riding pants, Claire nodded, bumping her hip against Fraser’s.  She immediately felt foolish for the gesture. Like a  _child_.  But when he bumped hers back, she could not help the smile that came to her lips.  Confirming with a nod, Claire said, “A walk.”


	13. Part XII: The Location

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wanted to post something to get the taste of 4x07 out of my mouth. Here is Part XIII. :)

##  **Her Royal Highness (H.R.H.)  
Part XII: The Location**

James Fraser was certain of only a handful of things.  

First, he wanted his life, from here on out, to be separated into two constituent parts.

_Before Claire._

_And Claire._

Second, he may never be able to give her his name or walk her across the threshold of his ancestral home, but he would lay down his life for her.

Third, nothing was more beautiful to him than this woman.  ( _The way she bent at the waist, her foot popping and suspending mid-air as she gathered fistfuls of clover.  The cadence of her voice as she fed the clover to Thistle, their pace slow and her body melting towards the horse._ )

Fourth, he wanted to make love to her, the love of his life, somewhere other than the lawn beside the palace or in the stables.

And it was a problem.

They had been kissing.  

Full-mouthed kisses with Claire’s back pressed against a tree, bits of bark catching her hair.  The absurdity of it all ( _the juxtaposition between their setting the night before and in the moment_ ) made her quiver with laughter against his mouth and under his hands.  Though, her laughter faded as he touched her breasts for the first time, hands slipping beneath her sweater to find them bare and her nipples hard. Their respective noises melded together with the sounds of the city that surrounded them –– the quiet moans slipping from her and the sighed, blasphemous mumblings that became reflexive.

Mouth twisted into a smile ( _swollen and glistening from his own mouth_ ), Claire broke the kiss ( _gasping for air_ ) reached for his belt. ( _Her greedy hands, with minds of their own, separated from her body and acting of their own accord.  She was outside of her own body, watching from a mile overhead and encouraging her every movement._ )  For her part, Claire had never known  _want_ to exist in the form of a  _need_.  Jamie was seared into her veins, the grey matter of her brain, the arches and whorls of her fingerprints. The need burned in her to touch him, to see all of him, to offer him the same in return.  

She had never known with naked certainty that her offer ( _her body, the quiet simplicity of just giving herself_ ) would be accepted.

And the knowledge of it spurred her on.  

To her, James Alexander Malcolm MacKenzie Fraser was oxygen and sunlight, rain, and sun-warmed soil.  

_Her sigh.  The sureness with which her fingers took hold of the metal buckle, the tail of his belt.  Her pupils dilated and lower lip wet again and again by her tongue._

For a moment, Jamie watched her small fingers work the leather free, but the blistering moment came to an abrupt stop as he realized the reality of their present situation.  

_The what.  The where.  The how._

When he reached down towards her, she received a message other than what he was sending. Rather than drawing the moment to a close, boldness exploded in her marrow.   _He would take care of his own._ She reached to undo her pants, got so far as to draw down the zipper, to feel the brush of the nude underpants against her knuckles.. He faced the greatest test imaginable of his resolve: the bow of her hips towards him as she popped the button free, the radiating heat of her sourcing and arched into the aching tent of his arousal, the echoing demand for  _more more more_  that made her breath hitch.

“Stop,” he said plainly through gritted teeth, catching her wrists.

“I need you,” she responded in protest.

“Not here.”

_The infuriating, bloody Scot._

Claire’s eyes were wild, fiery when she gave her direction plain as day. “Then take me back to the stables.”

Jamie shook his head again, thumbs learning the rhythm and tempo of her pulse.

_Again, the insufferable man._

Their mutual need had hung between them unsaid for  _weeks_.  

Well before the night before when he had followed her to that room and kissed her senseless.  

Long before this evening with their flirtation and fistfuls of clover and late-night conversations that let them peel one another back layer by layer. ( _The cabin he inherited when his father passed away.  How how he skipped stones in the moss-colored tributary just down the hill and through the woods from the cabin’s bayonet-battered front door. How they first learned to ride.  The first time she had ridden Brimstone.  The way he had made Donas his special project after a war they never discussed._ )

Those moments all built to something.   _The need_  that took root without her knowing, growing, its branches growing branches and reaching for sun.  And now she wanted to collect on the promise of it, to shed together the burden of their unmet desire. His unspoken reticence was jarring.

“Is it me?  You don’t want…? Or you haven’t before…?”  The trail in her voice tugged something in the centerline of his heart and then again longitudinally.  It was as though his very heart was being separated into its chambers, drawn and quartered for her.  It was the first hesitation, questioning of them.  And it was too much.  He drew her hand to his mouth, kissed the warm, smooth heel of it.

“Oh, Claire,” he slurred, mind still only half made up not to take her then, there, against the tree.  “It’s none of that.”

An entire book of lamentations could be composed to detail the sorrow he felt at the prospect of parting from her for the night. The need of her would dilate every blood vessel in his body, leaving him with an unfathomable emptiness.  It would be met only by furiously jerking himself to a groaned, not even moderately satisfying completion in his shower, slicked with shampoo.  And it wouldn’t be enough, he would regret this moment.  Saying “no.”

She landed a kiss on the corner of his mouth, narrowly missing his lips.  The soft, wet dart of her tongue along the corner of his lips was so erotic that he had to close his eyes, concentrate on drawing himself away.  As gently as possible, he drew her wrists up and between them, let them hover where neither could feel the other’s heartbeat ( _a tell-tale sign that they would fall together, never again to rise, despite his stated intentions_ ).

“I willna make love to ye there… in the stables… rutting ye like some sort of…  _horse_.”

 _Make love_.Two words ( _low, like a secret to keep in the mind and not the body_ ).

Joined together, those two words were like a trickle of ice water down her spine.  Not to quell her arousal, but to make apparent his precise intentions with her.

“ _Christ_ , I want ye now, Claire.  Ye must ken that I’ve spent many nights wondering if I could ever have ye in my bed. If ye’d ever see me that way.  I cannae give ye what ye deserve, but I willna give ye less than everything I have.”

Claire whispered his name then ( _the one given by his mother well before “Jamie” was a word that would turn his head_ ), and he released the gentle cage of his thumb and forefinger on her wrist.  Hands scrabbled.  Hers to his face.  His to her waist. Her thumb and forefinger worked a sure path along his chin and jawline.  With no pretense, she said, “I have no clue what I deserve.  I suspect that what I  _deserve_ is very little,  _especially_ from you.  I just  _need you_. I would not take anything other than you, ever.  Just…  _you_.  So, please. Take what I can give you.”

His Adam’s apple bobbed in the long line of his throat, his teeth finding the soft, full pad of her thumb. He bit down lightly, flicked his tongue over the place where teeth sank into the flesh.  “Let me put it selfishly, then, for ye, Claire.”

His breath was warm, uneven on her damp thumb. Existing on the edge of a sigh, she urged him on. “Go on then.”

“Selfishly? I intend to take my time wi’ ye.  Undress ye, let my eyes discover ye.  Every inch of ye.”  

His glance down her clothed form was perhaps the most sexually charged thing that she had known in her life until that moment.  The mere introduction of his hands to her hips and his fingers sinking into the swell of her buttocks were an accelerant sprayed onto an already aggressive burn.

It was like the first touch of a lover, the process of learning how the shape of his fingertips felt like  _here_  or  _there_.

 _Foreplay_.

“And then?”  The breathless syllables were small, hardly her own.  

He ran one hand from her hip, up her side, over her ribcage. He hesitated only a moment ( _to lick his lips, orient himself to the moment_ ) before taking a single breast into his hand.  “And then, I’ll work ye into a frenzy, tasting ye everywhere. I want ye to  _need_ me, Claire.  To be blind with it.  To beg for more.   _And then it’ll be time_.”

His cock was about to snap clean off body at the way she looked down between them, studied where her hands had gone to rest at his hips. She licked her lips, making them a glistening cherry color that threatened to drive him unapologetically, irrevocably mad.  

He ached at the prospect of walking away from her, the thrilling way that she threatened to draw him in.  

 _Soft.  Warm_.   _Arms. Thighs.  The very core of her_.  

“ _This––_ ”

––hand leaving her breast to gesture between them, hand sculpting air––

“––willna be in the stables, where anyone could stumble upon us.”

The quirk of a smile.   _Hers. His.  A matching set._

“At least not the first time.  Our first time together… I…”  

His voice trailed off as he realized with a sudden, acute awareness just what he was talking about.  Not just sex.  An act he had rarely given a second thought, performed with some middling level of bravado throughout his twenties, was about to become transformative.  

He was talking about making love to the Queen _.  Again and again, the act becoming a regular thing between them._

Making love to _Claire._

Her name’s very meaning was  _bright_ , _clear_.  _Sorcha._

He knew her mind.He was proposing that he would learn her body.

 _(Or_ ** _perhaps_** _she was proposing the same thing.  He proposed nothing.  His words were merely a reaction to_ ** _her_** _. To those eager eager eager warm hips, the imagined taste of her on his tongue.  Maybe the hesitation in his desire was constructed not of an old-fashioned sense of propriety, but of need to serve her well._ )

She tilted her head, breathing his air and staring at him with such a naked look of suggestion that his heart free fell into his guts.  It took a moment to collect himself from the notion that he could have her.   _Know_ her.  In nothing more than a moment, he could say “yes” to the question she posed and the matter would be concluded.  They would join together and be lost to one another forever.  Those black pants around her ankles, that shirt rucked up around her breasts.  Her fingers, scented like clover, scaling his back ( _oh fuck, his_ ** _back_** _, a series of complicated stories to broach with her before she stripped him even barer_ ).

“I’m no’ the romantic type, but I want to be wi’ ye somewhere wi’ just the two of us.”

“No horses?” she asked. The sudden burst of laughter that came from her was crisp and sharp, the first ring of a church bell on a Sunday morning.  A call to worship.   _And Christ did he ever worship her_.  

His fingers worked their way down the delicate curve of her neck, catching springing curls and drawing them taut.  As quickly as it had rang out between them, her laughter died.  Though the joke continued, his voice was solemn when he said, “No. No horses.”

For the first time, though, James Fraser grappled with the logistics of  _it_.  Of  _them_.  This life. How difficult it might be simply find a place to make love to her. The prospect lined his wame with ice.  “I could come to ye––”

She silenced him with a quick, small tilt of her chin.  

 _An immediate rejection of the prospect_.

The shift in her was almost imperceptible.  Rolling her head, he dropped his hands from the back of her neck, allowing them to trail down to rest just above the swell of her breasts.

Said aloud, the possibility of going into that palace, was too much to take.  

He could not bear the thought of seeing her bared to him for the first time while within the walls that suffocated her ( _he knew her longing to be free of them, to leave them behind_ ). The contents of his stomach curdled at the thought of those  _eyes_ and  _ears_ everywhere –– living in the wallpaper, burnished into the finish on the furniture, waiting with mouths like kindling searching for a spark of gossip, existing solely to catch fire. To be next to her, learn the various ways of her ( _how she tasted on the flat of his tongue, sounded with his fingers inside of her, reacted to the introduction of his body to hers, breathed when she came off the edge of an orgasm_ )  in a bed where another man had been only days earlier.

An alternative suggestion formed. “I could come to your apartment––” she started, interrupted by Jamie’s low, Scottish noise of discontent.

“It’s no’ a place to bring someone ye love, Claire.  It’s teeming with people who could see.”

( _That narrow government-issue bed. The alarm clock.  The toilet flush that needed jiggling to draw down the contents of bladder and bowel.  The chipped countertop.  The hallways with the harsh lighting that led to the quarters of his fellow staff.  Her staff._ )

Tears swam in her eyes, stinging at the unfairness of their situation.  “I could…  _escape_.”

His brow furrowed, palms moving to cup her cheeks.  Those sweet, rosy cheeks.  Flushed with arousal and frustration.  Unstained by tears. “A jail break? Tell me.”

“I will figure it out.  Your cabin? We can just…  _get away_.”

The skepticism in his gaze made her laugh.  She kissed him.  Not just with lips, but her hands creeping up his waist and around to his back, her tongue sealing the flavor of her to his tongue.  He knew she was likely over simplifying.   _Just get away_.  The promise of it was tantalizing.

“When?”

She rose onto her toes, landing a furious battery of kisses along his jawline.  “Tomorrow.  Likely in the evening.  I will send word to you somehow.  Mrs. Fitz. I trust her.  Always have.  She was my uncle’s right hand.  Sometimes she was the left hand, too.  Lamb would… disappear… at times.  She must…”

“Are ye sure that ye can trust her?” Jamie asked, fighting to maintain his composure under her direct assault to his senses.  Though her answer was “ _yes_ ,” Claire was not sure what choice she had either way.  She nodded and he turned just enough to meet her mouth, to breathe her in. He pulled back from the kiss only rain more down along her cheekbones, thumbs running along her eyebrows and temples and jaw.  She could not help the small, frustrated sigh as he dropped his hands, pulled up the zip on her pants, and carefully fastened the button. “Just awhile more, Sassenach.”


	14. Part XIV: Motorcycle

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> NSFW.

##  **Her Royal Highness (H.R.H.)  
Part XIV: Motorcycle **

In the end it was easier for Claire to up and leave her life than she had anticipated.  Though it was no less exhilarating than she had dreamed.

Mrs. Fitz, with her watery blue eyes, soft-lined cheeks, and small smile ( _knowing, warm, encouraging_ ), had touched Claire on the arm tenderly.  From the warmth and familiarity in the gesture, Claire could almost see this same scenario playing out with her uncle.  ( _His need to get away, the sincerity and understanding in her eyes_. _There existing no need to know the details, perhaps preferring not to know anything at all._ )

She was quiet, accent thick as she gave Claire’s arm a reassuring squeeze and said, “Ye dinna need to e‘splain yerself to me, ma’am.  Nor do ye need to fret ‘bout the particulars, ye ken.  I can spin a yarn tae keep anyone who asks after ye occupied.”

_No explanations.  No need to get a story straight._

Claire kissed the woman on the cheek and then the forehead, embracing her in an uncharacteristic show of emotion.  The mumbled “ _thank you, thank you, thank you_ ” made Mrs. Fitz’s cheeks glow crimson.

The letter to Jamie was circumspect.  

Not the type of torrid missive sent to a soon-to-be-lover.  

Short, no endearments, and sealed with wax ( _and not her stamp_ ).  

A time.  Reference to the small parking lot tucked into the trees behind the stables.  A small hesitation mark where she had started to write “ _xx_ ,” but had lifted her pen. 

Mrs. Fitz took the note without even batting so much as an eyelash.

With the few logistics settled, Claire was determined to live out of a small bag for her three-day weekend.  

Fresh underthings ( _white, nude, black, all the same cut and shape, none particularly sexy_ ).

A pair of simple gray trousers ( _ones she thought made her arse look smart and had only even been worn to tread a path across her living quarters_ ).  

A well-worn white t-shirt ( _a stowaway from a life before –– a stint playing field hockey in her schooldays_ ).  

A sweater the color of wine ( _a chunky knit that wrapped around her and tied at the waist_ ).  

A toothbrush ( _fresh from the package for travels_ ).

A hairbrush and hairband.

A pale blue dress that buttoned up the front and cinched at the waist with a navy belt.  

A slip of a nightgown ( _one she had never worn, having bought it for a “special occasion” that had never manifested in her pre-Jamie life_ ).  

Standing at her bathroom counter, she manipulated her cosmetics bag, letting her fingers complete a hasty exploration of it before setting it back on the counter.  None of it was not worth the real estate in her small bag. Jamie would just have to live with her scrubbed face.

Unlike the preceding day, where every moment had felt like a drudgery, the hours flew by in a flurry of last-minute activity orchestrated by Mrs. Fitz.

“What will you tell people?” Claire dried her palms on her pants, feeling more than little silly with her hair wrapped behind a colorful silk scarf and eyes shrouded by blonde tortoiseshell sunglasses.  

Mrs. Fitz tucked the leather satchel over Claire’s shoulder. Her hands strayed there in a way that made Claire feel a burst of affection for this dedicated woman who she did not know well at all.  “I dinna ken the truth of where ye’re headed, Claire.  I never kent wi’ Lamb, and I never want to ken wi’ ye either.  Ultimately, though, it’s no’ m’business, aye?  Ye get away tae where ye need tae be, like yer uncle, yer parents, and yer grandparents before them, and ye leave the schemin’ to me.  What’s the phrase, then? _Plausible deniability_?”

All at once, Claire could have cried, kissed her full on the mouth, and pulled the sturdy woman to her in an embrace.  But all Claire could manage was a nod and a gravely admission of: “ _I understand_.”

With one final squeeze, Mrs. Fitz said, “Go.”

Although Claire’s eyes darted across the landscaping, up the seemingly endless row of windows, and along the furthest reaches of her vision, she saw nothing that would give her away. It was a surprisingly dull afternoon on the palace grounds.  No one appeared to take even the briefest of passing glances at her.

 _It was almost too easy_.

When she saw Jamie, her heartbeat quickened –– a moth fluttering its wings against a light bulb.  He was waiting for her there in the parking lot, spit shining the glass gauges on his motorcycle.  For a moment she studied him, though her feet still carried her closer.  She had never quite understood the colloquialism “walking on air” until that moment.

His head swiveled when she said his name.  

And, _oh Lord_ , the way her heart threatened to burst at just the sight of him.  

Illuminated in the sliver of sunshine peeking through a morning of drizzle, his hair was a thousand shades –– auburn, red, cinnamon, strawberry, blonde among them.  He had the look of a long day on his face, though it immediately melted as he scanned her from head to toe.

“Ye came,” he said, voice not indicating even the mildest incredulity at her appearance.   _Just stating a fact_.

“I did,” she said in return.   _Just confirming a fact_.

He rose from the seat, giving one of the mirrors one final swipe with his cloth before tucking it into the motorcycle’s gear bag.  “Are ye okay ridin’ this? I should’ve asked ye last night, but…”  His voiced faded, not yet feeling at ease enough to discuss with her the absolutely mad need he’d had to get home and take care of himself the night before.

“I’ve always wanted to ride a motorcycle,” she admitted, touching the cool chrome of the brake.  She reached for the smaller of the helmets dangling from the handlebars, and asked, “Mine?”

“Aye,” he said after clearing his throat.  He took the helmet and carefully situated it over the scarf covering her hair.  Her eyes fought to flutter closed at the feeling of his fingers slipping along her jaw to fasten the strap, the slight tug of him drawing it tight.  Her drive to reach for him overwhelmed her instinct to close her eyes, and she studied him.  The firm set of his mouth and brows as he threaded the strap through the second buckle.  The twitch of the fine muscles lining his jaw as he tested the strap.

“Am I secured?” she asked, lowering her voice and imbuing it with a level of seriousness that she did not believe was called for by the situation.  Before he could answer, she sealed her mouth over his, rolled his leather jacket in her hands and pulled him against the front of her body.  

He pulled back, a little taken aback.  “That was bold, yer majesty.”

Snorting, she dried her lips on the back of her hand. “Fortune favors the bold, Fraser,” she trilled, throwing a leg over the motorcycle.  “Now, shall we go?”

Forty minutes later, he had transported them both to what seemed to her to be an entirely different planet.  She spent the ride wound around him, her hands around his waist and cheek pressed between his shoulder blades.  And his hands –– the way his palms had traveled along her forearms, held her hands against his stomach with a stray thumb stroking the fine bones of her wrists.  It was a perfect series of moments that she wished she could will into lasting forever at the same time she felt pure joy to have behind her ( _they had arrived_ ). The cabin.  Their new world.  Trees draped heavily over the winding gravel path leading up to the cabin.  The air was heavier and cooler than Edinburgh somehow, smelling of wet leaves and peat and carrying on it a chorus of birds and a stream.  The ground was unpaved, rain-damp and gritty beneath her feet.

“I ken it’s no’ much, but it’s been a home to me––” he started, running a hand over his face as she extracted her belongings from the bag attached to the motorcycle and slipped the strap crosswise over her chest.

Turning to him, Claire rose onto her toes.  It was natural as the dawning of a new day or the sinking of a sun at the end of one to thread her fingers into his hair.  ( _She had concluded on the ride that it was wavy, and that with a little less attention at the barber, it would curl around her fingertips._ ) Rooted to him, she shook her head, needing to silence his apparent unease over where he’d brought her.   _It was perfect_. Eyes madly searching his face, she licked her lips.  “You brought me to the perfect place. _Yours_.”

A grumble rose in his chest, picking up gravel, until it was an almost disconnected grunt. She wound her fingers more tightly in his hair and drew his face closer.

“Do not dare say anything against it or try to diminish it for me.  This day started when I came down to your motorcycle and it has been perfect.  It will _be_ perfect.”

Jamie nodded, adjusting her bag, working free the slight twist in the strap with a reverence that could have been confused for a calling.  Curving her fingers against his scalp, tracing a mole buried deep in his hair that she had never before felt, she kissed him. Something ignited in her belly as his tongue probed at the seam of her lips, his hand fisting around the strap of her bag and drawing her closer.  After what felt like an eternity in the span of mere moments, he pulled back and looked at her again.  “Ye’re a rare woman, Claire.”

Snorting, she slipped her sunglasses off and slipped them into the side pocket of her bag.  “Well, I am the _only_ queen of England.”  The sweet, playful smirk that met her lips transformed her eyes, made them sparkle.

“Did ye just make a _joke_ , yer majesty?” he asked, gripping the strap tighter, pulling her ever closer.  She was suddenly struck by the realization that there was no way to be close enough to him, nothing that would satisfy this burning, aching need in her.  “A wee _bad_ joke?”

“Oh _aye_ ,” she responded, arching into him as he released the strap and slipped his arms around her middle.  As though she weighed nothing more than a pillowcase of loose feathers, he lifted her.  Instinct took hold and she wrapped her legs around his waist. “Take me inside, Fraser?”  

The earnestness with which she whispered it ( _nuzzling the line of his jaw with her nose and the hot, wet bow of her mouth_ ) made him want to break through the door just to find the nearest mostly horizontal surface.

 _Bed.  Couch. Countertop.  Kitchen table.  Floor._ _Whatever._

It had been awhile since he had carried a woman this way, felt the warmth radiating against him.  Hell, it had been awhile since he had been near enough to a woman to touch her this intimately.  But something told him that he had never carried or touched a woman like the one who was holding him like he was the last buoy in a storm.

“Careful,” he groaned when she introduced her teeth to his earlobe, dragging the small curve of flesh just a bit before soothing it with her tongue. Jamie stopped, steadying himself with one hand on the roughhewn siding before unlocking the cabin door. In caution, he mumbled, “I’ll drop ye.”

“I know you won’t drop me,” she responded matter-of-factly, nestling her nose in his hairline, the quiet sniff she gave him not aiding his concentration.  Her fingertips pressed into his shoulders ( _needy, finding the textures of him_ ) and drew from him a new sound.  An “ _mmmmmmm_ ” with a small puff of breath on the end. It made her feel like a _woman_ –– powerful, sexy, wanted, _his_.  She would have sworn in that moment that she could feel the blood pumping through her heart as it beat in great, pounding wallops.

Against his better judgment, Jamie set her down in the center of the front room, hands engaging in a minor topographical exploration of her sides as she settled again to her feet. Looking around unabashedly, she shed her bag to the floor.

It was both nothing that she had expected and precisely as she had imagined.

A huge river stone fireplace served as the foundation of the room, marked up to the mantle by a plume of char speaking to years of fires. A plush oriental rug framed the space beneath a caramel leather couch and a massive floral patterned chair.  A coffee table was empty and scrubbed clean but for a blue vase stuffed with some dried thistle.  Paintings lined the walls –– a wiry grey hound, a young girl with a paintbrush in hand and wild look, and a young boy with fat cheeks and red hair crouched over a puddle with a stick in hand.   A sliding door was mostly obscured by thick, velvety curtains.  A doorway led into a kitchen where she could see an avocado green suite of kitchen appliances, a rattan light fixture, and a stack of mail on the counter.

A chill ran down Claire’s spine as she caught Jamie’s steady gaze.  He was leaning against the wall and watching her take in the cabin.  He was almost predatorily handsome with his slightly parted mouth and hip popped against the pass through to the kitchen.

She commented that the cabin was beautiful.

In return, he made a Scottish noise before evenly observing, “Ye have road dust all over yer bonny face, Sassenach.”

She swallowed and offered him an unconvincing half smile. He closed the distance between them in three long steps and easily slipped the scarf from her head.  With as tentative hands as she had ever had, she shook out her curls.  “I’m guessing I look a little mad.”

He made a quick _hmm_ , smirking as he inspected her hair.  “Ye look a little out of sorts, but ye’re as beautiful as ever.”

She wondered if she would ever tire of hearing that sentiment in his mouth.  She found herself thinking that she was not sure he would ever tire of saying it.  The naked sincerity in his eyes, the easiness of his mouth as it slipped over the words like water rushing through hands. It washed away any doubt that she had.

“We could wash up?” she suggested, voice bland as she endeavored not to come across too tentative, too _boring_ for him.  He brushed a curl behind her ear, lips moving to her temple.

“The guest washroom is just down the hallway.”  He inhaled her, lips finding her hairline.  “Anything ye’ll need is in the wee linen closet behind the door.”

In a mirrored movement, they both crouched for her bag, but he beat her to it.  “I won’t be long,” she said, accepting it and slipping it over her shoulder.

“I willna keep ye waiting either.”

The shower stripped the afternoon chill straight from her bones.  Though it was a beautiful summer day, it was a drizzly, quintessentially Scottish one in this part of the country.  By the time she had towel dried her hair and peeked out of the half window above the toilet, she realized that a storm had started to surge outdoors.  Dipping her hands into her bag, she pulled out all of the clothing she had packed.  The sensation that gripped her for a moment at her lack of intention in curating a weekend wardrobe could be described only as “ _abject horror_.”

The dress.  The trousers.  The slip of a nightgown.  The sweater.

_What in the world should she put on? This place felt like a home, but it was_ **_not_ ** _her home. Nothing seemed suited to the occasion (whatever it was, though she had her suspicions and a warm, melting honey feeling coated her belly at the prospect).  The dress was too summery and cheery for the dreary weather.  The sweater and t-shirt and long pants presented too many layers.  The slip was too forward.  Everything was too_ **_something_ ** _._

Jamie’s voice was quiet, but loud enough to carry through the door.  “Are ye alright in there? It’s been… a bit.”

Swallowing, she drew the thumbnail out from between her teeth. ( _It was a nasty, nervous habit that her mother had been assiduously working to break with near success at the time of her death, but a habit that her uncle had never bothered to address with her._ )

“No,” Claire answered, feeling a green envy creep up her throat like a vine.   _Men_ and their limited range of fashion choices likely had no such quandaries.  “I mean, no, I am fine. It is okay.” Her voice trailed, guts aching to let her brewing scream of frustration bound off the walls of the cabin.  Quickly, she pulled the slip over her head.  She looked at herself in the mirror somewhat skeptically. It fell nearly to the tops of her feet, the deep v neckline bordered by a thick trim of pale lace.  “I’ll be just a minute.”

“Take yer time.  Just wanted to make sure that ye were no’ plotting an escape into the Highlands through the window.”  His voice had a light to it, though it was apparent he had entertained the notion for more than the moment it took him to express it.

“Do not be silly, Fraser.  I cannot abscond from this place through that window.  It is far too small for me to slip through.”  She pulled the sweater on, just to see what it looked like, tilting her head to the side as she inspected the effect of the sweater and the slip.  For a moment, she considered whipping it off and throwing the door open whilst completely nude.

“Yer arse willna fit?”

She almost choked on a laugh, one that she was convinced probably sounded like a sob.  “Of course it will not fit. Have you seen it?”

“Of course, I’ve spent a fair amount of my time gettin’ acquainted wi’ that arse.”

She turned, placing a hand flat on the door.  

She was _so close_ to feeling like _Just Claire_.

She studied the diamond and onyx ring on her right hand. It was a setting created for her with Lamb’s stones. The stones of her grandfather. His grandmother before him. An entire lineage of kings and queens almost all the way back to the creation of the Church of England.  It was a generational piece molded to fit its current wearer, but it was in no way sentimental.  It was no more to her than a bond to her title.  Carefully, she drew the ornate bauble from her finger, inspecting it before setting it on the bathroom counter. Wearing it was wholly unnecessary for _whatever_ was about to happen.  Her hand felt somehow lighter.  Her confession came unbidden: “I am not sure what to wear.”

For a moment, she rested her forehead against the door.

And then, clear as day, she heard Jamie say, “So come out naked.”

Snorting, she traced the grain in the wood down, tried to identify a shape in the whirling oak.   _A face with a bulbous nose? A cartoon duck?_ Before she could second guess herself, she opened the door.  Fraser was in a t-shirt and a pair of black pants.  For the first time she saw the mass of him that was generally concealed by his work clothes.  She was taken aback by just how _huge_ he was.  Biceps that swelled against his shirt in half-moon curves, forearms corded with muscle, waist and hips narrow, chest broad and defined.  She licked her lips unconsciously at the way his hair curled more fresh from a shower, the heavy way the curls drooped over his hairline.

She was the one to take a step this time, going to him on tiptoes and joining their mouths.  His hands went first to her head, but then coursed down her back, filling his hands with the arse he had just joked about, squeezing.  

They had abandoned any pretense between them and they dangled close to another point of no return when she whispered, “Take me to your bed.”

His hands worked under thighs, guiding her up and around him wordlessly.  It took only a few short steps to get to the bedroom.  A small fire was crackling in its infancy stages in the corner.  She could not even bring herself to make a joke about his presumptuousness.   _That they would be in his bedroom._  But there was no pretense left between them.  Jamie set her down at the end of his bed and made quick work of the sweater, drawing the flesh of her shoulder into his always-moving, greedy mouth.

Just as his teeth began to drag an uncharted course along the curve of her throat, she sank her fingertips into the collar of his shirt.  The way he froze immediately, his mouth and hands stilling as though he had been stricken dead, froze her to the core.

“Jamie?” she asked softly, his breath against the trail of saliva he’d left along her skin chilling her flesh and drawing goosebumps.  “What is it?”

“I… I need to tell ye something.” He stood back, his full height somewhat imposing before her as he retreated another half of a step.  “Christ, I should’ve told ye ages ago.”

Her heart was pounding uncontrollably and she fought the urge to reach for him, to draw him back to her. “Just tell me.” She almost recoiled at her tone.   _The almost aloof, cold delivery of a queen_.  Mediating her tone, she repeated, “Please.  Why did you stop?”

He turned away from her, head bowing, eyes focusing on the floor, and he drew his shirt up.

Her utterance of his name was immediate, quiet.   _Not pity, but surprise._

His shoulders tensed at the sound.  Great, lean lines of muscle moved easily under gnarled flesh.  His back was scored with no particular rhyme or reason.  “I dinna need pity, Claire, but ye had a right to ken that ye’re about to bed somethin’ grotesque. I wasna thinkin’ when I didna tell ye sooner. I…”

“The war?” she asked, taking a step closer to him.  In parts, the flesh was barely touched by scars.  The geometric shapes of the unmarred skin varied –– squares, circles, triangles. In places it the same texture and color as that above the line of his collar.

“I was a prisoner in the war, Claire.”

She could see, plain as day, that a vicious whipping ( _or repeated vicious whippings_ ) had fileted him, bisecting moles and leaving small half-moons on his flesh.  A constellation of freckles above his left hip was obviously incomplete, the other half macerated by whatever implement had been used to torture him. The complete portrait of what had been there was not even a memory in the scar tissue left behind.

After a moment’s hesitation, she asked, “Can I touch you?”

The inhale of his breath was sharp and he dropped his t-shirt to the floor.  “Ye can touch me however ye want to.   _If_ ye still want to.”

She did not bother to respond.  Instead, she introduced her lips to the skin just below his shoulder blade.  She traced the ditch of one of the angrier, purple scars with her mouth, her hands finding his lower back.  Her lips, her tongue, her breath on him were a balm that no medical science had managed to replicate.

“I want to touch you everywhere,” she confessed, mouth finding the column of his spine.  She pressed her cheek against his back, closed her eyes, and felt goosebumps explode beneath her fingers as they sank into his waistband.  She found the unmarked skin of his bare arse, cupped the muscle and felt it twitch beneath her hands, and sighed.  “I want to explore you, James Fraser.  Memorize you.  Now more than ever.”

“Aye?” he said, voice less distant.  She did not open her eyes, but felt his shoulders square.

“Aye. Now take off your pants.” She stepped back, licking her lips at the sound of his belt working free and the descent of his zipper.  As the last of his clothing fell away, she took in the sight of him for the first time.  He turned, her heart leaping as she memorized him.  The carved plane of his stomach. The smattering of auburn hair over his chest and the flat, dark discs of his nipples. The almost-brunette thatch of wiry curls between his legs that rose in a narrow line up his belly interrupted only by the thick, hard line of his cock.

He licked his lips, taking in her appraisal of him.  “Ye look bonny in that nightgown, but fair’s fair.”

She gathered the fabric at her hips, slowly easing the slip up over her ankles, shins, knees, thighs.  Her eyes never left his as she adjusted her grip, exposing her hips, stomach, ribs, breasts.  She tilted her head as she drew it over her head and dropped it unceremoniously to the floor.

His breath caught at the sight of her.

Naked, unabashed.  

She raised a hand, turned it palm up as she reached for him. He took her fingers, coming close.  At the first contact of the lengths of their bodies, she hissed, rising onto her tiptoes.  “I have been waiting for this since maybe the second night that I met you,” she confessed, eyes intent on his.

“I have been waiting for this my entire life,” he mumbled in response, lowering his mouth onto hers.

The kiss was lazy and slow as their hands began to roam.  

A curve of a hip.  

The swell of one another’s buttocks.  

The calloused pad of his thumb over her nipple.

The soft weight of her breast in his hand.

The equally soft moan of pleasure that he swallowed as he drew the nipple between his thumb and forefinger.  

The hard line of his shoulder beneath her hand, the scars somehow smooth beneath her fingers.  

The wet sound of her hand between her legs before she ran a damp thumb in an orbit around the head of his cock.  

The responsive groan that came from him that felt like death and rebirth in the same moment.

When his hands slipped between her legs, tested the slickness there for himself, he roughly whispered, “Ye’re a goddess, ye ken that, aye?”

“A Maenad maybe?” she responded, moving her hands to his hips and taking a bold step backwards.  Lifting her by the hips, Jamie situated her at the end of the bed, her legs draping over the edge, toes just barely above the rug beneath the bed.  Before she could comprehend what he was doing, he was on his knees, trailing his nose and lips north from the landmark of her left knee.

The dream of him kneeling before had nothing on the actual sight of the act –– the crop of red hair working along ( _and between_ ) her limbs, the way he kept his eyes angled up at her, the stream of his breath along her flesh that made goosebumps rise to the surface.  

Her belly fizzed with anticipation, he was going to ––

As his mouth descended towards her pubic bone, pressing kisses that anywhere else on her body would be best described as _chaste_ , she wound her fingers into his hair.

She whispered his name once.

 _Reverence, a benediction_.

He slipped his hands beneath her thighs, hitched her up to what she assumed was his preferred angle of approach.

She whispered his name a second time.

_To get his attention._

He rested his chin just below her navel, studying her face.  The sweet line of her mouth was twisted, brows knit together.  “What is it?”

“I’ve…”  Her mouth suddenly went dry.  “I am not a virgin, and something tells me that you are not either, but I’ve never…”

His brow crinkled and his eyes narrowed. “Is this no’ okay?  I want to verra much taste ye, but if ye’re no’ comfortable––”

“It’s just that, no one has ever…”  

Her voice trailed off and she felt an uncharacteristic flush rise from her chest up her throat before it flooded her cheeks.  She rose up onto her elbows to get a better look at him.  She was in no way uneasy about being naked before him, spread out for him to take.

But _this_.

 _This_ was by far the most intimate moment of her life.

“No man has ever done… _that_ … to me… _for_ me.”

For a moment he looked at her, the tension in his brows fading.  He lifted his chin, placed a single kiss where it had been resting.  “I’ve dreamed of having ye like this for weeks, Claire,” he confessed, fingers sinking deeper into the soft flesh of her thighs.  Though the statement required no clarification, he said, “Beneath my mouth.”

Her breath hitched and she curled her fingers into the blanket.

“But we dinna need to… I’m _better_ than fine wi’… we can do whatever ye want.  Even if it’s no’ _this_ or anything else.  I can make us dinner and we can chat, I…”

“No. I want all of you, Jamie.”  She paused, shaking her head.  “I have had the same dreams…”

The look in his eyes wiped clear the vague hesitation lingering at the back of her mind –– _the way she tasted or smelled, whether he was doing it out of a sense of obligation, whether it was too much for their first time_.  He pressed another kiss to her, this time over the soft flesh curving just inches above his mouth’s final destination.  “Are ye sayin’ ‘ _yes_ ’ then?”

“Yes,” she whispered, consciously deciding to release the blankets, to let her hands still and go flat on the bed, legs falling further apart in offering.  He rose up to her then, kissing her on the cheek before moving to her mouth.  The kiss was gentle and short, his lips gathering her lower lip in a noisy, sucking way.  “Lie back.  Relax.”

Eyes still fixed on her face, he slipped his fingers between her legs and sighed appreciatively as she whimpered.

“Tell me to stop if ye dinna like it.  I’ll stop.”

She nodded.  

He kissed her once more, placed a light hand gently between her breasts, and pressed her gently until she was prone.  

When she was looking down her body at him again ( _eyes wide, pupils dilated, lips parted_ ), he decided to follow her gaze. He committed to take his time, though he wanted nothing more than to sample without delay the most intimate of flavors her body offered. Removing his hand from between her thighs, he took hold of one round, soft buttock, sinking his fingers into her flesh.

( _In his hand, fingers free to explore the ample swell of her arse, he realized it was even better than promised that first night as she bent at the waist over that gate in the stables._ )

And then his mouth was everywhere.

_Throat –– the small mole at the base, a destination for his tongue to flick and draw from her noises that made the hard parts of him pulsate an aching rhythm._

_Collarbones –– creatures with a wingspan that stretched from the freckled shell of one shoulder to the other._

_Sternum –– the firm column of it, cheeks nestling against the soft handfuls of her breasts._

_Said breasts –– the right and then the left, one hand working the opposite of his mouth_.  

_Belly –– the dip down from the cage of her ribs, a slight swell just below her navel that tasted of shower water, clean flesh._

_Hip bones –– arching like a sea monster cutting through the water in thick curves._

_Tops of her thighs –– rounded, firm, powerful._

And then his mouth was between her legs.

Norse mythology had valhalla.  A hall ruled by Odin, where the dead men of wars gathered for further battle in death. And he had Claire.  A mythical place after death, rebirth, the taming of her body a battle. And Christ was she beautiful. Her sounds, her movements, the heartbeat he could feel under his hand as his hand scrabbled for her breast.

While he was acutely aware of everything, she was only vaguely aware of anything.

The thunder clapping in the distance.

The hammering of rain on the roof.

The cracking of logs in the fire.

The noises that rolled from her mouth, rising from her chest and guts.

The bunching of the bed sheets beneath her lower back.  

The slick of sweat gathering below her bellybutton, trickling down along the bridge of his nose, salting his lips.

Blasphemies that she did not realize sheltered in the recesses of her vocabulary poured from her as his tongue and fingers worked in tandem.  His curls were damp, slippery between her fingertips as she tugged them and arched into his mouth like a bridge spanning the width of a river.  The slight tug earned an appreciative growl, a sigh, a redoubling of his efforts.  He reached for her with one hand, drew her fingers from his hair and tangled his fingers with hers as he found purpose between her thighs.

Her feet locked against the mattress, seeking to root themselves there and demanding the leverage to rise towards the hot atmosphere of his breath.

She begged for more.

Was denied.

He chuckled.

Contradiction ached in her bones.  ( _She pleaded for him not to stop.  To never stop. She pleaded for him to fill her. To spread her –– gripping, angling, thrusting._ )

He groaned a full laugh at the inconsistency of her demanding little mouth, his tongue moving in flat, lapping arcs before focusing the tip of his tongue where he knew she wanted him most.

His name the closing prayer of her every conscious though.

“ _I need you inside me,_ ” she keened, body arcing to match the needy pitch of her voice.

When he asked if he should stop, she bellowed a “ _no_ ” the likes of which he had not known could come from such a petite frame.

Pitching her hips forward, she _mewled_.

She felt him laugh against her and could have punched him square in the mouth for it, but the urge was fatally interrupted by the explosion in her guts.

Pulsating in her belly.  Tearing up the centerline of her.  Filling her lungs.  Pitching her entire body sideways.

He captured her thrashing thigh ( _a raging bull_ ) in his armpit and pressed her hip firmly into the bed as she attempted to roll from him.

He tasted her again and again as she tightened and released, quaked against his mouth.  The tide had only just begun to recede as he rose over her, his body moving with the animal grace of a predator about to take down his prey. The sight of him stalking over her, leg lifting easily to straddle her made her murmur his name ( _the one given to him by his mother, not the one passed down by his father_ ). Low and slow –– two husky syllables.

And then “ _more_.”  He blinked hard, palming one breast and leaning forward to kiss her breathless mouth.  “More?” he asked, dragging his lips over his forearm as he braced himself over her, unable to close the gate on his smile.

The debauched sight of her was every sunset and famous piece of art that he had ever seen. All of the sunrises over the loch near his childhood home and previous moments where he looked down at a woman thoroughly unraveled by him.  The first taste of beer after being released from that war camp and the oven-warm bread slathered in butter and clover honey that his sister baked for him the day he got home.  The feeling of his nephew kick violently in her swollen belly, her whispered admission at his awe that they had planned all along to name the baby James.

Claire was all of those moments and more. An incomprehensible expansion of time and space where all that existed was in this bed, but it reached everywhere.

 _Her chest heaved, a trickle of sweat zig-zagging down between her breasts, curling around one hard nipple.  Her was hair wild, plastered over her forehead and standing in knotty bits where she had writhed until the pillow had become jammed between the wall and the headboard.  Cheeks burned, glowed, shone with a slick of tears.  A divot in the shape of her teeth had taken up along the swell of her lower lip._  

Carefully, he parted her thighs again, kissed her on her jaw, and paused.

Still breathless, she whispered, “What is it?”

“Look at me,” he responded. The tone of his voice had a body, a broad hand that matched his own, a finger that beckoned her.

Her eyes opened. Limpid honey, threaded with caramel, ringed by burnt sugar –– fogged with arousal, faraway and filled with a naked adoration that made a lump form in his throat.

Jamie’s fingers found her chin and carefully tilted her face towards him.

Though they had already said it, something about this moment made it feel _real_ –– the giving over of her body and her acceptance of his becoming reciprocal commitments.  He could not manage to hold it in, and made a promise ( _for the first time in his life, he had the knowledge that he would die to fulfill it_ ): “I love ye.  I need ye, no’ just… like this… I think that it might be forever.”

She slipped an arm around his shoulders, drew him down to her.  “I love you, too, James Fraser, and I intend to do it forever, as well.”

He kissed her slowly, lazily, as though time was a nonexistent thing.  They would live in this age, in this bed, in this embrace for an eternity.  Ages passing, generations moving, entire civilizations rising and falling outside the four walls.

Her eyes were closed when he first pressed into the heat of her, but he watched her.

The gentle crumpling of the space between her eyebrows, the twitch at the corner of her upper lip as her mouth, swollen and ripe as a ripe peach, fell open.  Swallowing hard as he felt their pubic bones meet, his forehead burrowed into the curve of throat and the gentle rise of her collarbones.

He had expected to take her for the first time in an almost uncontrolled way, hard and fast with her wrists captured in his fingers and pressed into the mattress.  In a way that would leave marks that he would apologize for, kiss away.

But in the moment, he was too enamored with the way her body accepted him.  Molded its heat to the shape and size of him.  Created a symphony of sounds that he imagined were just for him.  

For her part, Claire’s heart knew as it fluttered beneath her breast that she had never felt connected with another human this way.  Fraser was in her marrow, her cells.  He burned behind her eyelids with each measured, firm thrust into her.   Bits of anatomy that she had been heretofore unaware of ignited, tingling.

“ _Tha gaol agam ort_ ,” he slurred against her in response to a particularly delicious little sigh as he slid almost entirely free of her, took himself in his fist, and found his way back again as his knuckles intentionally brushed over her most sensitive spot.

She reached for him, squeezing one buttock in encouragement as she hooked one leg around him and let the other fall completely to the side. “Kiss me while you make love to me,” she whimpered.

And he did, his lips firm against hers, becoming more demanding as he began to move faster, a hand on her hip, hitching her to him at a slightly different angle.  The quiet whimper of “ _harder_ ” against his mouth as she pulled back from their kiss was all the encouragement he needed.

His hips found a punishing rhythm,

With his fingers between her legs, his teeth on her earlobe, she exploded.  Fingernails created half-moon crescents in his shoulder and flank.  Mouth groaned vowels and expelled missives laden with breathy profanity.  Eyes cinched shut and body arched against him.  Gravity failed, only the weight of his firm body keeping her from floating off the bed to lazily bounce along the ceiling like an over-filled balloon.  Tighter, tighter, tighter her fingers gripped harder for some leverage.

“I’m going to…” he groaned, rhythm faltering and staccato hips snapping against hers with less control.  His eyes cinched closed with the beautiful image of her –– panting open-mouthed and writhing beneath him as she came moments before –– indelibly seared onto the theatre of his mind.  He repeated once more, “I’m going to….”

“Yes,” she whispered, barely coming down to earth again, hips pushing against him, fingers moving over his shoulders, his chest, his belly.  She opened her eyes slowly, a battle of wills she would have never suspected she was strong enough to engage. She took in his face –– the sweat, furrow of concentration, the pure bliss of a man tortured by trying to hold out _just a bit longer_. She stole his phrase, saying, “Look at me.”

His voice stuttered in an anemic protest and he looked her, groaning once again.  Her fingers splayed into a v, resting against her mound low enough that she could feel the slick length of him, hard and hot as he thrust into her.

“Let go, Jamie.”

This time, the profanity was his ( _oh fuck, his words skipping beneath the record player needle that spoke his thoughts into being_ ). As he gave himself over to her completely, his body pitched forward heavily.  Her teeth raked along his collarbones as he groaned, hips slowing but not immediately stilling.  Not just love grew at the whispered sentiments of Gaelic ( _ones she was not even capable of understanding in the least_ ), but _affection_ for this man.

“I’m no’ crushin’ ye am I?”   _He was_ , but she shook her head, licking a sloppy kiss along the column of his throat, the soft underside of his chin, and the arrow-straight bone of his jaw.  He rose up slightly onto his elbows, looking down upon her face.  Though tears pricked the corners of her eyes, inky black with mascara, she had the dumbest, dopiest smile he had ever seen on her lips.  “Christ ye look beautiful after I’ve taken ye.”

Her natural inclination to cover her face with her hand, to laugh, was overcome by the desire to put both of her hands to a more utilitarian purpose.

“I dinna ken that I’ll ever tire of having ye, Claire,” he confessed, kissing her cheeks one by one, tasting the sweat that made them glow, before taking her lips into his.

As he kissed her, her thumb and forefinger had a sudden fascination with the soft, boneless curve of his earlobe. Her other hand wandered, cataloguing his ribs, brushing over the scarred, puckered flesh of his ribs, crossing over to his chest as she neared the warm, musky heat of his armpit. She tested his nipple with her thumb, sighing into his mouth. “It is a two-way street, I think, Fraser. I do not think I will ever tire of being taken by you.”

He _hmmmm_ ’ed against her mouth, a quiet laugh slipping into the sound.


	15. Part XV: Cabin

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some quiet time in the cabin.

##  **Her Royal Highness (H.R.H.)  
** **Part XV: Cabin**

Claire wondered if it was real.

How  _any of it_ could be real.

The weightless feeling pressing against her skull.

The leaden feeling in her bones, save the very tips of her fingers.

The bobbing feeling of her mind, floating above the rest of her like a balloon swollen with helium and fighting at the end of a slippery string.  

The percussive orchestra of rain against the roof and windows becoming a tight drum. The slapping of fat, cool drops coming in sheets and pinging metallic in the gutters.  The gurgling draining of water off of the eaves, dripping and soaking the brown earth until it became a saturated, life-sustaining black.  

The slurring Gaelic in her ear as she finally emerged from the haze that had cascaded over all five of her senses.

“I’ve no’ ever…” Fraser started before his voice trailed away. He swallowed ( _once, again, a third time_ ) in an apparent ( _and unsuccessful_ ) attempt to clear a lump in his throat.  “Bein’ wi’ ye, I couldna begin to imagine…  _the closeness_ …”

Absorbing the rise and fall of his chest beneath her fingertips, her thoughts meandered. She put random meanings to his Gaelic.  Words and phrases that she had never heard, that she could not begin to spell.

‘ _Live, here, in a moment_ ,’ she thought to herself, trying to summon the mental image of an existence ( _however long_ ) where all that dwelt was rain, the cabin, and the man pressed against her.  

She allowed her eyes to close ( _a fight that she could never have hoped to win_ ), to just  _be_ with  _him_.

A man.  

Fraser.  

 _Jamie_.  

Hers.

The quiet reverence with which Fraser had touched her shoulder as she had risen to step into the bathroom after the stampede of their breathing had evened.  

The dumbfounded way she concentrated on her reflection in the mirror while performing a tender inspection of her swollen, smiling mouth behind the closed bathroom door.

The sound of him moving about the room, opening and closing a drawer, quietly coughing, hissing a curse over a toe stubbed by some dastardly piece of heavy furniture.

The finely carved, naked statue of him as she exited the bathroom, just far enough from the door that she knew he was not listening.

Theholding thick robe, white gone grey from repeated washing with a too-long mismatched tie.  

The look in his eyes as he had studied her matched the warmth of the kiss he placed on her forehead.

The tenderness and care he took as he wrapped her in the robe and whispered, “ _there, ye’re no worse for wear now_.”

The way she had fought to stop herself from whispering, “ _you’re wrong, you’ve destroyed me, brought me back to life_.”

“I’m hungry,” she whispered instead, digits curling under the too-long cuffs of the robe. The fabric was scented with him in a way that she knew would never wash clean. His humid puff of breath at the tail end of a Scottish noise cemented the baby-fine hairs at her hairline against her temple.  

“Are ye?”  As if it required clarification or words needed to fill the moment, he added, “Hungry?”

Bowing her head, she rested her head against his chest and framing her front against his hips with her hands loose at his hips.  “I am.  I want to eat and hear all about this place, and then I want to fall back into bed with you.”

His dry palm skimmed along the curve of her throat, fingers lifting her chin and tilting her gaze up to his.  “A perfect plan,  _mo nighean donn_.”

Eyes open, their lips met in only the briefest of touches.  “C’mon then,” she said lightly, smiling. “I would hate to starve to death before we have a chance to do  _that_  at least ten thousand more times.”

Brushing a curl from her forehead, he kissed her again. “I needta…”  His voice trailed and he gestured to the bathroom with a brief lift of his chin.

“Needta piss and clean up?” she asked, the broadness of her smile interrupted only by the quick sinking of her teeth into her lower lip.

Shaking his head, he pulled back.  The word “ _piss_ ” coming from her mouth in that regulated, manicured accent somehow sounded incredibly vulgar and well mannered at the same time.  “Ye’ll no’ ever cease surprisin’ me will ye?”

Flaring her nostrils and pursing her lips as she turned away, Claire shrugged. “I hope not.”

When Fraser emerged from the bathroom clad in sleep pants and a sweater ( _heldover from university_ ), he found the bedroom empty and followed the sound of clattering.

Leaning against the wall, he took in the sight of her in his kitchen for a moment.  She was entirely undone and moving about the space like she had maneuvered through it a thousand times ( _opened the cupboard to find a pan before, reached behind the cutlery tray for a can opener at some point in the recent past, lifted the lid on the countertop crockery not to be surprised at the sight of almost-melted room temperature butter_ ).  The robe’s sleeves were shoved up to her elbows. She had re-tied the oversized garment so much of the length billowed over the top of the tie.  From the waist down, was all swishing terry cloth, calves and thighs, creases behind knees, finely-boned feet, and painted toenails.  

Unadorned by jewels or makeup, expensive clothing or stacked heels, she was raw in her beauty.  Almost too pretty, her curved shapes belted into his robe putting her at maximum advantage and her hair in a snarl where he’d knotted in his hand while inside of her. On the spectrum, she was closer to the woman who came stumbling into his stables ( _her stables_ ) that one night than the one freshly divested of a tiara who had kissed him back with a stunning amount of alacrity.  In his kitchen, touching his things, she was his nameless horse caper, seeking some quietude.  

Claire hummed along to the crackling radio that she had kept low ( _Mr. Sandman bring me a dream make him the cutest that I’ve ever seen, a sway in her hips and tilt of her shoulders so brief he would have missed it had he not been so intent on her_ ).  He realized that his  _mind_  could smell her when his nose could not.  ( _It was imprinted on his mind –– clean and musky with sex, with satisfaction._ )  And yet, the desire to be near enough to catch her scent along the long peach fuzz parabola of her neck propelled him forward.

“What’re ye makin’, Sassenach?”

She paused, a wooden spoon in hand suspended over a pan.  “You do not have much in this cabin in the way of food.”  Her belly groaned in protest at the mere thought of a weekend of sex and little eating, and he quirked a smile.

“I thought of that verra thing as ye were clinging to me on the back of the bike, how ye may starve.”  He ran a hand through his hair before coming up behind her, drawing her back against him as she stirred something in the pot. “I can pop out and get some things tonight or in the morning.”

“Hmmm,” she sighed, leaning her head back and against his, her steady mixing of bubbling soup straight from the tin not missing a beat. “Tomorrow, and I will come along.”

Incredulity rumbled in his chest, a volcano signaling imminent eruption. “Are ye sure that’s the best idea? Small town folk are wont to talk, Claire.”

His hands strayed, one finding its way into the gaping opening in her robe.  He found what he was looking for –– naked skin. “If this splatters and I get burnt, I will be  _very_  cross with you, Fraser.”

Dipping his chin, he rested it as a crown atop the mop of curls that his lovemaking hands and her writhing against the mattress had destroyed.  For a moment, he felt a hardy, red-blooded male jolt of pride, as though he’d conquered her usually well-coiffed locks.

“A few things, Jamie.”  She tapped the edge of the spoon’s handle on the edge of the pan before turning off the flame.  

“Aye?” he urged, again taken by his name on her lips.

“One.  I can disguise myself to some extent. You would be surprised by how much the surprise of a situational inconsistency can throw people off.  No one expects the Queen of England to come wandering into a greengrocer or butcher shop in a small village on a sleepy Saturday morning.”  She lifted the lid on a second pan, revealing some sizzling sausages he had not realized dwelled in the depths of his freezer.  “And therefore, the Queen of England has a doppelganger at a greengrocer or a butcher shop.  People will say, ‘Oh, I saw a woman who looked like the Queen, but she had  _such a_  fat arse and a slightly more pleasant face.’”

Unconsciously, he glanced down to said body part, resisted the urge to comment on how much lovelier and fatter her arse actually was in person.  “I’ll have to take yer word for it, having never before bedded a  _star_  before,” he said, voice heady with a faux exaggeration that made her pinch his forearm and hiss. He merely chuckled. “What else?”

“ _Two_ ,” she continued on, his good-humored comment taken on board for what it was. “You cannot possibly know how much I want to be…”

Pausing, she set the lid back over the sausages and turned in his arms.  He drew her back, lest the drape of his robe get too close to the open flame beneath the soup and sausages. “What is it?”

“I do not want you to think that I’m being  _crude_  somehow… like I am doing  _this…_ ” Her voice faded as she searched his face, eyes like palms open, warm, and awaiting a blessing. He wanted her words. Her every thought.  “I do not want you to think that I am in love with you in some sort of fetishized way.  To get away from my life… from the formalities of it all––”

“––I would never––”

A single finger pressed into his lips as she cupped his jaw.  “I love you because I can be myself with you, but I would hate for you to think that I am using you as some sort of…  _outlet_  for a need to live a quiet life.  It is not that at all.”

He arched back from just enough to break her contact with his mouth.  “Ye’ll break my heart wi’ lovin’ ye, ye ken that, aye?”

Confusion molded her expression into one of incredulity.

“I would  _never_  think,” he began, hands tightening on her hips for emphasis, “that ye’re  _somehow_  taking advantage of me to live some dull, quiet, countryside life. Just as I ken that  _you_ would never think that I’m wi’ ye, lovin’ ye, and watchin’ ye fallin love wi’ me, just so I can bed yer…  _status_.”

When she closed her eyes, he leaned forward and kissed the salty seam of each.  Then the tip of her nose.  One cheek, her forehead, and then the other. The contour beneath one cheekbone.  Her mouth.   _Oh, her mouth_.  He took it with his own.  He took her small body melting into his, let his hands find their way through the gap in her robe and to fill themselves with the soft curve of her bare buttocks, her thighs, the small of her back, and again the handfuls of her buttocks.  

“Take me again,” she mumbled against his kiss-moist lips as he broke for a breath.

Without another word, he spun them, lifting her to the counter and untying the robe. “I’ll never tire of this,” he said, though his words were lost in the incoherent moan she let loose as he took her breast in his hand, guided the peak between his lips. With his pajama pants pooled at his feet, his sweater knotted in her fingers, he entered her with the kind of blind passion that leads people to various indiscretions ( _to roger a woman outside of a pub in an alleyway, to allow fingers an exploration far further north beneath a wife’s skirt beneath a table draped in linen while discussing business with a colleague, or to fumble about for a space to land in a coat closet, joined among the foreign-scented winter things of strangers_ ).  

She cried out against his throat ( _harder, please, oh Christ, harder_ ), nails sinking into his shoulders as she tried to hold on.  He heard her head smack a cupboard with a hollow clack, slowed, registered her admonition to “ _do not stop, damn you_ ,” and bowed his head in concentration.  

 _Take me again_ , she had implored him, eyes gilt and a gift to him.  

So he did.

 _Harder_ , she begged, her breath an invitation hastily written out so that he could have her completely.

So he obliged.

At the end of all things, her body was limp everywhere ( _except where it still quaked, attempting to pull him deeper and draw him closer like a siren in the form of a sparrow with a woman’s face, scaled feet and wings paired with arms_ ).  Feeling her that way, he wondered if she would  _truly_  kill him with loving her.  As he slipped free of her body, mumbling a wasted apology about the mess he had made of her, she gathered her to him with her legs.  

“Let me listen to your breathing for a minute.”  It was the whimpered, undeniable plea of a lover.  An ask that he could not fathom disregarding. “Please.”  

He allowed her to trap him there, milky softness of her thighs on his waist.  _The rest of the world does not exist_ , the warmth of her said.  

 _Seek me out_ , his belly called back, hearing nothing more than the echo of unspoken words rattling in his head.  His softening, damp cock awkwardly pressed between them as he drew her to the edge of the counter where he could hitch her to him.  

“The sausages,” she mumbled as he lifted her, started to walk them to the living room. Her legs dangled at his waist, her forehead falling to rest against his.  She had no spare energy left with which to cling to him.  Instead, she let him carry her dead weight, kissing his jaw almost apologetically.

“Fuck the sausages,” he sighed, laying her down and covering her body on the sofa.

Some time later, after a meal of burnt sausages and too-salty tinned soup, she was studying him.  Featherlight fingers fought the heaviness of her hand to trace the outline of his chest through his sweater. “Tell me about this place.”

He did.

Quiet and watching the fire he’d built in the living room instead of looking at her.  

Even with his voice low, he had the way of a storyteller about him.  

Voices for an ensemble ( _mam, da, Willie, Jenny, his old grisled Uncle Murtagh_ ).  Hands that warred between a thorough exploration of the buttes and basins of her body and to embellish the hills and valleys of his tale.  Eyes that glittered beneath thick lashes, widening and narrowing for emphasis.  

A cabin built by Brian Fraser for his new wife, Ellen, after World War I.  A place that absorb his screaming nightmares into exposed wooden rafters.  Where his family gathered for Christmas, dragging a tree down the sloping, snow-covered hills on Christmas Eve.  Decorating it with popcorn and cranberries, eating Jelly Babies until their teeth ached.  A home for weekends of hunting and fishing, where he came to drink himself into a stupor when his father passed away.

After a time, he fell silent and just held Claire, thanking God that she was  _there_ , that she did not ask questions he did not want to answer about the place where their bodies were molded into one. As the fire died, Claire hovered on the precipice of sleep, her toes just glancing over a placid pool of dreams.  He was surveying the parts of her that he had just recently discovered, staked a claim to.  Men had been along the plane of that throat before. Between her legs. And wrapped like vines around the parts of a brain that make people foolish when they believe that they’ve discovered love. Men who she thought she had loved and who she had convinced herself had loved her. Claire was certain that if she had anything whatsoever to do with it, Fraser would be her last, her only.

“Ye look as though ye could start snoring on me at any moment,” he said eventually, rolling a curl between his fingers over and over again.

“If I sleep today will be over,” she confessed, an undisguised note of longing in her voice. As much as she longed for another layer of intimacy with Fraser, she ached at the thought of loss over missing a single moment alone with him.   As if by fighting sleep, she could extend the hours in the day or suspend the passage of time.  

He hummed with appreciation at the sentiment, pressing his nose along the swoop of her neck, inhaling in a way that made her drowsy.

She had not slept with many men other than Frank, but she concluded that to actually sleep with someone did construct a sense of intimacy, as though her dreams had flowed out of her to mingle with his. It was an ultimate act of trust to sleep beside another person. The armor of clothing and status had been stripped away. She was bare, vulnerable.  The shield of a word or glance impossible behind closed eyes and a searching, dreaming mouth. It felt somehow more intimate than the joining of their bodies.

“I’m about to sleep myself, Sassenach.”

She needed to ask what that word meant, but she did not need to ask to know that he was hers now, and that she belonged to him.  She did not belong in the sense of a  _thing_  ( _his woman, a chattel under the law_ ) or a  _concept_ ( _the royalty_ ).  Rather, she belonged as someone having fallen completely and irrevocably.  She could not possibly dwell anywhere but inside the chambers of his heart or the memory of his skin on hers.

Closing her eyes, she closed out the nighttime ramblings of her lonely mind.  The worries about gossip in her home, the speculations of a citizenry or her own family.  By the name of the God on whose name Claire became Queen, she would have this man.


	16. Part XVI: Market

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A Saturday at market, a Sunday morning of waking up.

##  ****Her Royal Highness (H.R.H.)  
**** **Part XVI: Market**

Claire hopped from foot to foot at the edge of a murky puddle as Jamie attempted to strong arm the shed door into sliding open.  His abashed declaration that he did not have an umbrella, bent at the waist in the front hall closet, led them to become creators together.  On the front porch, they tented a blanket over their heads before darting across the front lawn to the shed. It had been a completely ineffectual attempt to stay dry.  Laughing, he had fixed the blanket in her small fists before braving the rain to fight the door. It protested viciously before finally relenting with a groan.  Giving him a firm pat on the bottom, Claire slipped into the shed and groped along the wall for a light switch.  When she found it, the room sizzled to life beneath a yellow glow, revealing a seafoam green pickup with a chrome grill.

“It’s no’ much,” Jamie opined, rising to the door’s stubbornness with his own and pushing it the rest of the way open. “Pre-war, a bit rusty, but dependable. It should have a full tank and working heat.  Ye’d no’ thank me for a motorcycle ride in this weather.”

“It’s  _perfect_.”  

He made a responsive Scottish noise of disbelief, followed her gaze to his father’s truck, and dried his hands on his trousers.  

“I mean it.  It’s perfect.”  

She ran a finger along the hood of the pickup, trying to remember the last time she had been alone in a car with a man.

 _Never_.  

Drivers.  Staff.  Never even with Lamb or her father.

The answer was that the Queen had  _never_  been alone in a car with a man. 

And quite suddenly all she could think of was being Claire alone with Jamie.  In another life, her  _real life_ , there was always someone else  _there._  Breathing and occupying her space.  Someone waiting to dote on the Queen. To select a wardrobe and costume her for events in gowns or well-tailored skirt suits. To whisper the names of politicians in her ear as she feigned a detached recognition of parades unremarkable faces. To select the courses of her meals for her, to serve them on historied porcelain and in cut crystal.  

She wanted to tell Fraser that it had been an entire weekend of firsts, but the notion seemed soppy and overly sentimental.  So she kept it tucked away in her mind’s file folder, where she was going to keep the memories of this weekend.

The first morning waking up to his eyes studying her, hand hovering over her cheek. Realizing what his first arousal of the day looked like.  ( _Hazy blue, pouting lips, sluggish fingers_.)  The first shower with a man, slippery hands and soft noises becoming heavy in billows of steam.  ( _His arms around her. The fact that he did not bother to ask if she needed the water hotter, just knowing and turning the hot tap full on_.) The first weekend afternoon with a lover –– no umbrella, pouring rain, a pickup truck, the hastily constructed grocery list of two people who rarely were called upon to make their own meals.  Though chilled to the bone by the rain, the soft, warm domesticity of a weekend in a kitchen had her floating. ( _The negotiation of a pair over what was for breakfast, the touch on a lower back when passing utensils from a drawer to a hand_.)  

Though Claire lived a life defined by the constancy of others’ presence, this was the first stretch of days through which she had not felt lonely in a terribly long time.

Rather than divulging all of these firsts, she commented instead that he looked to be soaked to the bone.  He smirked, commenting that he was in good company.  

He opened the door for her, gave an exaggerated bow, and earned one of the laughs that sounded so sweet to him.  The ones that overwhelmed her small frame –– lifted her shoulders, tipped her head, made her touch her belly as though there were something there to contain, fighting for release. The laugh made her eyes go iridescent –– the color of approaching autumn and a dusky moment of silence before a thunderstorm, the burnt leaves escaping a bonfire to crawl over velvety night to meet sky.

He rounded the front of the pickup, slipped into the driver’s seat, and let the keys drop into his palm from their hiding spot in the sun visor.  With a silent prayer on his moving lips and a turn of the key, the truck roared to life.  

“Will everyone in town know who you are?” she asked quietly, suddenly a little self conscious despite her bravado in declaring her ordinariness the night before.  She squeezed the rainwater from her dress, giving him an apologetic smile as it dribbled onto the floorboard.  “I mean, if they know you, they’ll know I’m not your wife.  Where you work.”

“No.”  His voice was firm, sure, but she asked again.   _Are you sure?_    _I mean, really sure_?  Angling his body, he looked at her, really studied her.  She was nervous.  It glowed through her usual formality.  Became apparent in cider, whisky, and firelight.  _She was stanzas of poetry begging to be written in his hand_.  “I’ve no’ been to this town since I was a lad.  I was a tall, skinny thing wi’ spots enough to make a firehouse dog jealous.”

“I am having great trouble picturing that.”

“Believe it,” he hummed as he put a hand on her knee, rubbed a finger across the small, silver scar that he had identified there earlier that morning.  (“ _Three stitches.  Breaking out of the girls’ dormitories after curfew with a few other girls.  I was fifteen.  I thought Lamb would kill me, but he laughed.”_ )  She shivered. “Do ye want to go back inside?”

“No, I––”

“––to warm up?  I can go to the market––”

––she shook her head, licked her lips––

“––just pop in quick for a few things.  Come back.  It’s twenty minutes there, another twenty back.”

Though her dress had become a plaster cast over her thighs and the peaks of her breasts, he had gravely misinterpreted the shiver.  It was his familiarity that made her tremble, not nervousness. It was the sensation that they were meant to be together.

“Turn the vents on full blast.”  She shook her head again, this time almost violently.  “I’ll be better than fine.”

Unconvinced, he shrugged, turned up the heat, and pulled out of the shed.  

In the twenty minute ride to town, Claire learned a lot about Fraser.  He could not sing, hum, nor whistle. He could not find the rhythm in a song or carry a tune in a bucket. When he tried to wink at her, it was such a garish contortion of his usually beautiful features that she collapsed backwards into the seat in a fit of giggles. The laughter made the very core of her body ache.   He set his jaw every time that he slowed to a rolling stop, carefully looked both ways, and held his breath before he again accelerated.  He draped an arm across the seat behind her as he backed into a parking spot as he finished off a story about the family dog giving birth behind the Christmas tree one year.

In the overbright, lightly populated market, Jamie learned that common things awed the Queen of England.  So common, that Jamie imagined that shopping with her was a lot like what it would be like to shop with a readily impressed child.

Tinned peaches. ( _“My father loved them with cottage cheese; he ate them for dessert, and I haven’t had them in years,” she explained as she pulled three cans off of a shelf in her small hands, spilling them into the trolley._ )  Icebox cookies speckled with candied cherries and nuts. ( _“I could eat a thousand,” she declared with a guilty look and an easy tilt of her head._ )  A butcher’s case stuffed with various cuts of meat, the front lined with vibrant green paper grass and the trays sitting on lacy paper doilies.( _Her fingers pressed against the glass as she turned to look at Jamie over her shoulder, face cracked apart in a smile. “A pork chop supper? It’s all I know how to cook that’s at all special.  It was La-” she paused, offering a smile at the butcher who was taking a bit too much of an interest in his delighted patron. “It was my uncle’s favorite.”_ )

She became wistful as they meandered down an aisle of baking supplies.  “My mum had the best hand at baking,” she declared, voice pitched low.  He pushed the trolley, bent forward at the waist, resting his weight on the handle and watching her.

“Mine, too. Hated it, but she was the best.”  

Her fingers traced the front of heavy bags of sugar and flour, the scarf in her ponytail swishing with each step.  “I was too young to remember much of it.  But cakes and biscuits, fudge at the holidays.  We had our own house… still Crown property, but not… well, not anything like….”

She faded away.  The quiet, rubbery click of her stacked heels stopped, and her wandering fingers suspended just over a can of sweetened condensed milk.

He took another step, pushed the cart out ahead of her, surveyed the aisle.  

 _Alone_.

“Jamie, I do not know what to say. I am afraid that I am a little sentimental for some reason. I have not been in a market in years.  I remember my mum boiling cans of this.”  She studied the label, brows furrowed. “It sort of turns to a caramel.”

He closed the distance, took a can from the shelf.  “Let’s give it a try.”

This time, she was the one to survey the aisle, then went to her tiptoes and placed the most delicate of kisses on his lips. “You aren’t the least bit worried that I’ll burn down your cabin?”

Grimacing in mock confusion, he shook his head.  “No. Ye’re goin’ to do this over a campfire in the back.  Really roughing it.  I willna let ye near the stove after the mess ye made of those sausages yesterday.”

Laughing, she kissed him again.  When they got home, something inside Jamie roared to life and easily became wild for her. After braving the rain from the shed back to the cabin, her dress had become a second skin. It made her into a statue. An exceptional Bernini, the sensual weight of her limbs barely contained by fabric draped and carved of marble. The curls that had been so warm and dry in his bed and beneath his fingers only hours earlier were cemented against her cheeks, coiling around her throat, charting a perfect map for his mouth to follow.  With the bags tipped over, spilling contents onto the floor, he came up behind her and drew her backwards, followed that map, went off course, and poured into her all of the need that dwelled inside of him.

They made love there in the entryway, her body molding over the back of the couch and his hand on her spine.  He wrapped her in a flannel shirt after, kissed the tip of her nose.  In the late afternoon, she made her pork chops, boiled potatoes, and a green salad as he poured them each a drink.  Afterwards, they had fallen back into bed together. Her tongue was earthy with sage and whisky, her lips swollen and her mouth emitting tender sounds.  He tasted her beneath the hem of the flannel, her thighs clamped around his ears.  She returned the favor with a gusto that made him gnaw a bite mark over his knuckle.  

They talked for hours until the slow rise and fall of his eyelids fell, throwing his words into a slowed stupor that eventually stopped.

The rain did not abate overnight.

Claire listened to the landing of every drop, her touch molded to muscle ( _chest, bicep_ ) and his face tucked close to the curve of her throat.

She did not sleep.

In the earliest part of morning, he woke slowly, eyes still sleepy.

“Hi there,” she whispered, pushing a curl back from his forehead.  Bees buzzed in her mind.  A thousand ( _a million_ ) thoughts came to life, knocking against the edges of the hive. With an exhaled “ _hmmmmm_ ” deep from his belly, his eyelids drifted closed again.  “Are you going back to sleep?”

“I’ll no’ ever sleep again now that I ken ye’re awake,” he slurred into the pillow.

His breathing slowed and she gave him a gentle jab in the ribs. “Sleepy little liar.”

“I’m just resting my eyes, Sassenach” he mumbled, cracking one eye and looking up and down her thin form.  “Did ye have something in mind? To keep me awake?”

“Once more,” Claire whispered, bringing a knee over his hips and settling against him.  “Before we go.”

_Once more.  Before we go._

He hadn’t the heart to tell her that he had planned on having her at least twice before they packed up, but the surprise of waking to her wanting him was like Christmas morning and his birthday all at once.  

The curtain of her curls that fell forward from her top of her head painted a shadow across her face in the waning moonlight.  Tightness in his belly made him shift just slightly beneath the slight weight of her.  The naked parts of her radiated wet heat through the thin cotton of his briefs.  He reached for the buttons on the flannel shirt ( _he would pack it and bring it home; he would not wash it, it smelled like her now_ ), but she shook her head and pushed away his fingers.  She made a meal of undressing –– a slow, seductive disrobing.  The last button undone, the fabric fell open and exposed nothing more than the midline of her torso.

A roving hand slipped into the back of his shirt to find her lower back, urging her forward.

“I need you inside of me.”  

He grunted quietly in response as she slipped the band of his briefs over his hips, her fingers struggling between the sheets and his bottom to free him completely.

“Insatiable, are ye, lass?”  Sleepiness made his voice syrupy and his accent thick, but his  _eyes_.  Those glowed blue in the dark, awake and sparkling as though somehow lit from within.  She smiled, through the uncomfortable thought that had roused her ( _going home_ ) and led her to straddle him ( _not having him there like this_ ), still dwelled at the front of her mind.  

“I am.  Insatiable.”   _For you.  For this.  For us._   

“I can see right into yer mind, Claire.”  A single hand on the center of his chest as she rolled her hips along the length of him, her throat creaky as she swallowed.  

 _‘Can you?’ she thought. ‘Everything changes at first light. Sunday morning. This life in this cabin isn’t real_.’

He guided her body so he could feel her ( _exquisite, slick, and soft; clearly having been ready long before he woke_ ), and found the ache of his horrible yearning morph into a painful need.

“Is that so?”  

“Aye,” he said evenly, eyes focused on hers as he surged into her. She worried what he could see on her face as they joined and she bowed herself forward, burying her face where his shoulder met his throat.  On top like this, she was almost too full with him, yet needed more.  Her hesitancy made his hips lift, pressing them even closer.  

“Christ,”  she hissed as she ground back down over him, wondering if he could see the words at the back of her mouth or if he saw only images flashing across her brain.

 _All of their waiting_.  

Their nights with Brimstone and Donas.  Their thinly-veiled innuendos dropped easily for the other to pick up from horseback.  The separations at the end of the night that ached, long glances as steady fingers readied the horses for a night of rest, and incidental touches that gathered a multitude of meanings like arms full of wildflowers.

“Okay?” he asked, one hand on her waist and another reaching for her cheek when she pulled back up, straight, and started to move.  

She relocated his hand from her face to her breast, and moved against him slowly.  “Perfect.”

 _All of their hesitancy_.  

The day he stood before her in the stables and told her in no uncertain terms that he did not know if he could wait for her.  When he laid bare his conclusion that what they were doing was  _wrong_ as long as she had promised herself to another man.  For her part, unfaithfulness to another seemed to be only a petty crime then.  To be unfaithful to another, just so she could  _know_  Fraser in all that he was.  To wear an affair like a second skin for a summer ( _the season that she said they could use to sate their hunger for one another before she married_ ), and then to wear it from her wedding day onwards forevermore as a crown of thorns.  

Her name fell from his lips, pleas to the God on whose name she was Queen, and hisses of profanity followed.

( _Claire.  Oh God.  Oh fuck_.)

She fell forward again.  This time into his mouth, breasts crushing against his chest as she kissed him.  He rolled them, taking her wrists and pinning them above her head as he took from her the sensations she had withheld. Crying out beneath him ( _last name first, first name last –– Fraser, then Jamie_ ), she let her hands go slack, cinched her eyes shut.  She had thought very little of what would happen if she had him without an expiration date occasioned by a marriage.  He released her wrists, kissed her, tucked a hand between their bodies, and slowed his hips as she finished.  

_Pulsing. Gasping.  Weeping.  Finally._

Her fingers found his face, held it as his universe burst moments later.  

Spent, he laid heavy over her, marveling that he could feel her fingertips travel the length of his spine.   _Feeling remained there when he had convinced himself long before that the mangled, puckered flesh was beyond sensation_.  Goosebumps broke out along his forearms and he nuzzled his face closer to her.

“What are you thinking?” she asked eventually before placing a single kiss in the space between his clavicles.

“That ye’re no’ ever so beautiful than ye are when ye’ve been loved.”  She felt so  _small_  against his chest, his hand cupping a single buttock.  “Tell me what is in that curly heid of yers.  I ken it’s sittin’ somewhere far, far from here.”

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, adjusting.  “I said on Friday that I did not want this to end.  Now…”

When her voice trailed away and her face dipped, he took her gently by the chin.  He finished for her.  “Now it is.”

“Exactly.”  

She could have washed her face in a new round of tears at the way that his lips quirked into a half-smile.  “Och, weel, we’ll be back.”

“But until then… how?”  

Loving him seemed like a felony.  Subjecting him to her life.  The flash bulbs.  The adulteration of this place, the quietness of the cabin and the sleepiness of the town that they had visited. The expectations that would be foisted upon him.  She had little doubt that he would take it all for her.  That he did love her, but the fact that this weekend was not an infinity rattled her.

He swiped away the line of tears accumulating at her lower lashline.  “Ye’re thinking too far ahead, Claire.  Wondering if this can work.  _How_  it can work.”  

She just hummed in response, closing her eyes.  “Sassenach.  What does it mean?”

At this, he snorted, kissed the tip of her nose.  “An English person.  An outlander.”

_Seemed right to her._


	17. Part XVII: Stables

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Back to normal, sort of.

##  **Her Royal Highness (H.R.H.)  
** **Part XVII: Stables**

Folded against the warmth of Fraser’s leather jacket with her legs on either side of his hips, it was easy for Claire to pretend.  That they were not going home ( _to the Queen’s summer residence_ ), that they were just out for another ride. That the rest of the world just existed as transient wax figures, melting and insignificant.  That their world existed solely in the cabin and that it waited for them just around the bend ( _the bed, the kitchen, the spot for two in front of the fireplace, the shower with the slightly mildewed curtain, the soft planks of the small deck off the rear of the structure_ ).

They were a couple meant not to be seen, not to be heard, but just to exist together as one.  Claire indulged the fantasy as she closed her eyes, felt his fingers wind through hers when her grip slackened around his waist.

“Ye alright?” he asked, grip pulsing as he slowed to let another vehicle pass on the narrow road.  She turned her hand so they were palm to palm.  She pressed the very tip of her index finger to the thin, throbbing skin of his wrist.

“Better than just fine,” she said, attempting to sound strong, reassured, confident ( _and failing in actually being any of those things_ ).

He lifted her hand, kissed the place where a fortune teller’s thumbs would divine a destiny for her if she were the kind of woman to frequent such a place, and then carefully situated it over his stomach.  “No’ much further.”

She closed her eyes, drawing herself to Fraser’s back as tightly as possible.  The nearness of home was precisely what she feared most.

Claire’s first glimpse of the palace’s exterior alone was as effective as a bucket of ice water sluicing down her spine.  The sensation jarred her out of the two and a half days of their cabin tryst and back to reality.  She tucked herself further into the warmth of his jacket as they came around a bend and through a grove of trees, trying not to count their remaining minutes of anonymity.

The motorcycle ground to a stop, kicking up an opaque earth-flavored plume of beige dust around them.  It was like the world knew they needed obscurity just a few moments longer.

With her cheek against his back, Claire concentrated on the indistinct perimeter of gravel and unkempt clover (it had overtaken the grass in a whimsical, fairytale kind of way).  After a series of heartbeats, long enough that Jamie wondered if he had imagined the whole thing ( _the weekend – their trip to the market, a car ride, cooking side by side, excavating the shape of her body from beneath bedsheets_ ), Claire moved.

He reached for her waist to steady her as she threw one leg over the motorcycle. His hand fit there just as it had over and over again that weekend.  The pleasure and warmth of the touch, though, made her heart flutter and then morph into the ghost it would be until she could see him again.

“Tomorrow?” she inquired hopefully, letting a finger catch a curl just above his collar as her eyes darted around the stables.  All it would take was the attention of some well-meaning employee who had become a weekend straggler for the plume of dust to settle, for things to change. She was fully aware of this fact when she touched him ( _hand hesitating only momentarily_ ), but Fraser could sense the conflict in her.  It dwelled in the oaky bite of her amber eyes, between the arches of her well-manicured eyebrows, in the tremor in her fingers as she touched his nape.  To be caught would mean there was no need to skulk around with one another, to make plans under the cover of a dusky dinner time after everyone had left for the evening.  Being caught would be freedom itself.

But no one was there to catch them, to disrupt her pre-packaged life and his mundane post-war subsistence.

Claire’s other hand curled around Fraser’s shoulder. She longed to feel his heartbeat under her cheek as she slept, to wake to his hulking form over her as he kissed the delicate, almost-avian swoop of her neck.

‘ _Come find us_ ,’ she thought somewhat ruefully, able to picture completely the face of someone on her staff seeing her like this. ‘ _See us.  Have the bravery to open your bloody mouth. Tell everyone the queen’s shagging the Crown Equerry_.’

“Tomorrow we can ride,” she supplied.  “Find a quiet corner of the grounds.”

A pause to ready him for a confession.

“I want to be with you more than just in secret, but we…”

Fraser’s affirmative sound was low, gravely in his throat before he turned to excavate her handbag from the depths of the motorcycle’s saddle bag.  Suddenly having no choice but to acknowledge the impending loss bubbling a quiet brew in her belly, Claire tightened her grip on him.  

‘ _Stay, stay, stay with me_ ,’ she yearned to plea.  ‘ _Just come up there with me.  To my room, those halls.  They can’t say ‘no’ to me.  They won’t say ‘no’ to me.  You aren’t ready, and I know that.  You never will be ready, the people of this country will never be ready, so let’s do it.  Now.  Why wait?_ ’

“This weekend,” Fraser began as he pushed an errant curl from the center of her forehead, “has been sae perfect, Claire.”

“I…”  

Her voice trailed, fading into the narrow plume of exhaust that was slithering out of the motorcycle’s tailpipe.  Words felt just as toxic, and she choked not on tears, but the thought of that world back there that they had only just started to construct.  

Jamie could not look at her just then, could not face her.  His eyes did not dart around the perimeter as hers had, but instead they found a spot alongside the building where the clover was growing wild.  He fixed his eyes there as his hand fell away.

“This was the best weekend of my life,” she whispered as a bookend to make her feelings clear ( _they could not be any clearer_ ). She bent to touch his stubbled cheek with her lips one final time.

He made a sound, low and indistinct ( _certain, reciprocal_ ).

‘Again with that noise,’ she thought. It was a white-hot tone originating from somewhere ancient, surely not from him. ( _But he didn’t need to say anything at all_.)

His vocal cords were paralyzed, useless appendages for a beat, until he croaked, “Me too.”

The sun had begun its descent, the bottom curve just barely tucked beneath the line of the horizon.  The weekend was at its end, the summer-bloated sun finally giving way to the chill of nightfall.

It was time to go _(to return to a place she did not belong, never belonged, but she would somehow remake in time – remake it to create a space shaped for him, shaped for her_ ), so she bade him farewell in the only way she knew how.  It was the only way that would stop her from clearing the lump in her throat and asking him to take her upstairs.  She kissed him ( _hard, firm, fully_ ).  The shape of his mouth, the taste of it, the responsiveness of it from that first night that felt like an occurrence centuries old just then were all memories.  She knew it (that mouth, his breath, what it did to her, what it did to him), but she wanted the memory to be fresh.  A breathless, aching, swollen reminder of it to carry with her on the short walk back to her cage. So he urged his lips apart, though but he did not kiss her back ( _could not kiss her back_ ). His lips had died a slow death as they crossed the city limits, the realization dawning in him that this right here ( _born in the stables, tended on horseback, blooming in the cabin_ ) was sacrosanct, cloistered, and perfect.  

And it would change.

Finally, he confirmed their plans with only the barest, whispered “tomorrow.”

Like a gymnast fallen off her apparatus ( _the tight line of a balance beam to walk, the unforgiving plane of the vault that threatened her, the uneven bars with a backwards and blind approach_ ), she attempted her maneuver again.

A kiss to draw from Fraser the shine of the man that had pressed her against the wall of a cabin shower just ninety minutes earlier.

The man who looked up at her under a torrent of water, and declared with a blind authoritativeness, “You’re mine. I’m yours.”

The man who made her whimper until she wept with need.  

The man who took the mundane parts of a world it was easy for her to forget even existed ( _the unity in a simple pre-work chore of making a bed scented like their lovemaking, in shopping with a squeaky trolly for produce and tinned fruits, in filling of the tank on a vehicle as she dabbed a fresh coat of lipstick in the rearview mirror with the preternatural tingle of anticipation that in short order he would suck it clean off her mouth_ ) and made it a technicolor dreamworld.

This time, his lips animated and molded to hers.  

He kissed her back.  

Long and hard; searing, but in no way final.

It ceased to be an exchange between lovers and instead became self preservation.  

Breathless, Claire was the one to pull away, lips heavy and bright with a swelling rush of blood. ( _A good victory, they both concluded_.)

“Tomorrow,” he parroted, his voice firmer.  

Claire wiped her mouth with her sleeve, the glistening evidence of his kiss melting into a secret known only to the exceptionally discrete fibers of her blouse.

“I love you, Fraser.”

His hand fell from her hip to the curve of her bottom.  He smiled, tilting his head.  “And I love you.”

And with that, he watched her walk. Her smart trousers were a little worse for wear ( _creased, dusty_ ) and her hair whipped free in the light breeze as she unbound it from her scarf. Though she was heading back towards the mottled brick and arched entryways of the castle that she had often described as her cage, she looked lighter somehow.  Like it was not a burden, but instead a challenge.

“Claire,” he called, not bothering to examine his surroundings yet again for company.

For only a second, she peeked at him over her shoulder and ruffled her hair with a roving hand.  She smiled, waved, blew him a kiss.  

Okay.  A look.  It was all he needed.  Yes, okay.

He nodded and watched her turn again.

As she neared the palace, he realized for the first time that while he had her Friday night through Sunday evening, he would be well and truly alone on Sunday night.  It gave him a sudden, sinking appreciation for the things that she had said she would never be able to give him.  

A Sunday dinner, a quiet discussion in bed about what the week ahead would hold.

Doing dishes side by side ( _he was an egalitarian sort, afterall, being raised by a father who did not mind “women’s work” and was the brother of a woman fiercely invested in equal sharing of a household’s day-to-day maintenance_ ).

The radio would be turned low to a station that did not quite come in.  

To the crackling song, they would hum or sing, sway in time to a familiar rhythm.

Early in the evening, he would make love to her with his hands revealing all the hills and valleys and quiet lochs of her, the sounds that he could elicit with a touch, a caress, a kiss, a lick.  

The news would come on the radio.  

They would listen half-heartedly, playing naked with a deck of cards so fresh that they snapped and cracked when shuffled.

He would tell her everything.

( _That he loved her.  That he was damaged, and how he came to be that way.  That something about her made him not see the world through a pinhole for the first time in a very long time.  That he was so glad that he could tell the world about them, about her - a woman so insightful and funny without meaning to be that it stole his breath_.)

He would tell her everything.  

And without him asking ( _he never would_ ), she would take it from him, bear it for not more than a moment on her narrow shoulders, and then let it go for the both of them.

And then he would make the paintbrush of her hips move in arcs across their shared bed linens again.  To create a piece of abstract art that only they could know. He would take her at his leisure, sinking his fingertips into the modeling clay of her hips and arse and covering the softest parts of her with his mouth again and again, just as he had that first time.

When it was time for them to grow their family, he would measure her belly with his hands and lips.  Rub her feet after a long afternoon.  He would perhaps take a second job.  He would insist on being in the room when she went into labor, to hold her hand and brush the curls from her forehead, to catch her eye and promise that it would be okay.

She was almost to the door of the palace in her wretched, wrecked pants.

He blinked.  

A searing burn and then an ache: _They would not have those things._

He did not begrudge her it.  ( _Her life. Her birthright_.)  He could not because he had known the weight of her title the moment he saw her turn around in the stables that night. He knew that it was unfair to resent a status that she could neither dispose of easily or help. But the depth with which the realization struck him – fast, hot, like a poker.  

Clearing his throat, he drove away well before he could see her cross the threshold of her cage.

In bed that night, simultaneously too hot and too cold ( _sweating, shivering_ ), he tried to ignore the things that took him over.

The hollowness in his chest.

Their first night together when Claire mumbled in her sleep and fussed with the covers, a sheet slipping free from her form to expose the soft peak of a breast.  

The ridiculous amount of butter and jam she smeared on her toast, and the way she turned a spoon about her tea cup three times counterclockwise and once clockwise.  

The splitting apart of her face as he commented on the jam, the corners of her eyes wrinkling as one small hand offered him a bite.

The hardening of his cock, unbidden, at the thought of her whispering to him in the night about the ways that he made her ache, the confession that she had touched herself thinking of him before their weekend together.

The way she had marveled at the market over the mundanity of things like tinned peaches and stale, pre-packaged biscuits.

When he woke it was as though he had not slept at all.

He was living with a secret so broad, growing at all times, that it made him wonder if his body had seams.  A zip along his spine and at the back of his calves.  A line of snaps along the curve of his skull that he could open at his leisure to relieve the pressure.

By Monday morning, a cold shower and aspirin were not enough to staunch the bulbous ache growing in his head.  

He spent the day doing paperwork and waiting for someone to declare knowledge of his weekend activities.  

When finally asked (“ _what did ye get up to this weekend, boss?_ ”), he made bland comments about some time at a family cabin.  

He wondered, tearing into a ham sandwich and apple at lunch, whether he felt somewhat like what a robber feels.  The knowledge of a heist, clandestine and forbidden, becoming a persistent niggling begging to break free. Wiping crumbs from the front of his shirt, he saw her.  

_Mrs. Fitz._

With her watery eyes and toddling steps.  

He knew _(just knew)_ what was in the note clutched in her pale fingers before he opened it.

Her writing.  The Queen’s writing.  Not Claire’s writing.

_Been detained for now._

_Tuesday?_

_It is supposed to be a nice night._

_Perhaps a good night for a ride?_

_& always,_

_C._

He ran a finger along the clean line where the note had been folded.  Where her fingers had pressed down.  

Was she hesitating to meet? Had regret consumed her such that she had drifted?

Jamie cursed under his breath, closing the note again and nodding to Mrs. Fitz.  Meeting her swimming, faded denim eyes was surprisingly easy, though she did not have the glass face of her Queen. He could not tell what was clicking away behind her inscrutable, lined face.  He nodded.  She took back the note, an act that sent his heart teetering over the edge.

“Did she say when?”  His voice was coarse, somehow disembodied as he acknowledged the truth of their relationship to someone outside of it for the first time.

“Tuesday,” she said evenly, tucking the note into the hip pocket of her smartly-tailored and unseasonably thick wool jacket.

“Aye,” he ground out. “Tuesday.”

But Tuesday brought another visit from Mrs. Fitz.

_A second note._

This one signed much the same, though with an apology (“ _Duty calls and I am so very sorry, Fraser_ ”).

And then her promise of Wednesday.

And when Wednesday came, she came with company.

An ambassador from a Canadian province or mayor of a Canadian city, he was not sure which, because the sound of his teeth grinding together transformed the introduction into  mere white noise.  He looked at her, shaking the man’s hand.  She was detached but for a flicker, a nod, the press of her palm against back just above the beltline as they inspected the Queen’s stables.

And then, she was proper as a nation could expect of its Queen.

“Colonel Fraser,” she started primly, flicking a stray bit of hay from the elbow of her riding jacket.  “I trust that we have a horse to accommodate our guest?”

“Aye, we do, ma’am.”

As he helped her into the saddle, his hand sculpted itself to the shape of her calf.  He smirked at the sharp intake of her breath, the quick dart of her eyes.  

“It’s no’ verra queenly to touch yer stable lad’s arse.”

“It was not your arse,” she hissed, wrestling the reins from his hand and fighting the urge to slap his hand away as it traveled over the back of her boot to her ankle.

“Ye’ve got a good fit for a saddle here, ma’am,” Fraser called a little too loudly, his eyes sparkling a little too brightly.

“James Fraser–”

“I’d take ye right here if we werena wi’ an uninvited guest.”  He reveled in the way her cheeks pinked a glorious, embarrassed rose color.

“Fraser.” She was only halfway annoyed, and he was sustained by the fact that he could recognize as much from her face, from the way she shifted slightly in the saddle.

The steed upon which the Queen’s guest was mounted came ambling over.

Giving a weak, two-fingered salute, Fraser bade her a pleasant ride, and retreated to his office.

It wasn’t until Thursday that she made good on the promise to visit.  It was late.  Well after the sinking of the sun and the warming up of a veritable orchestra of summertime insects, and long after any reasonable employee of the Crown had departed for the day.

It was the kind of visit that they had planned when they parted.  Alone and untethered to any sort of duty. At a distance, Claire paused to watch Fraser work. His shirtsleeves were rolled up to his elbows and a bead of sweat was coursing down his temple.  He looked roguish in a movie star way, a little too intense in his work and maybe a bit dangerous.

“You have not shaved this week, have you?” she finally asked, leaning against the gate of an empty stall.  “I thought as much when I saw you last night.”  

Jamie did not look to her, but his shoulders squared at the soft, conciliatory lilt of her attempt at banter.  

“Are you cross with me, Fraser?  Will you look at me so I can tell?”  She paused ( _one one thousand, two one thousand, three–_ ), and his head fell as he rested the pitchfork against the wall. “I know I said Monday, and it’s Thursday. So I could not blame you if–”

“Ye verra well could, though,” he interrupted as he pulled shut the feed room door and turned to her.   “Blame me that is.  It’s no’ like I didna ken that ye have duties when I took up wi’ ye.”

“You ‘took up’ with me?” she asked, incredulity sneaking into her voice like a teenager out past curfew.  

“Ye ken what I mean.”

“Are you very cross with me?”

“No, no’ cross wi’ ye, Claire.” It was only half of a lie, for ‘cross’ was different than ‘frustrated with all of this need for you that lives in my guts and makes it hard to breathe.’ Unabashed, he looked her up and down once, twice, three times.  His tongue darted out, inhabited with a mind not entirely its own, and he wet his lips. “More cross wi’ the world, yer majesty, for endeavorin’ to keep us parted.”

He bowed with an exaggerated depth. The gesture drew mad, barking laughter from the pit of her stomach and and she strode towards him.  She was up and into his arms before she could realize that he was closing the distance between them more quickly than her legs could carry her.  With a ragged breath, Fraser consumed anything else she could have wanted to say.  Wound tight around him ( _arms, legs_ ), she first tasted the salt at the corner of his mouth.

“I wasna kiddin’ when I said it–”

“ _Here_?” she breathed into his mouth as he backed them through one of the open gates into an empty stall.  

“Aye,” he confirmed, dropping to his knees and easing her onto her back. She was magnetic, undeniable and perfect.     Opening her mouth to lodge some mannerly protest that she did not truly mean, Fraser worked his fingers between fabric and flesh, over the plane of her stomach, and between her legs.  

“I want ye right here.”

She made a sound and fisted his shirt in her hands.

“And from the feel of ye, ye want me to take ye here just fine.”

The space between her brows melted.  In its place was a quiet, determined crease as she ground down against his fingers.  

“I have been wanting this…”  She sucked her lower lip into her mouth, sank her teeth into it only for a moment before continuing as a breathy, but somehow full-formed version of herself.  “Since Sunday night.”

He took it all in, because their three days apart seemed something like a premonition of a longer separation.  

His shirt went taut against his back as she gathered fistfuls of fabric and pulled him closer.

“I’ve wanted ye right here in the stables since ye came clambering in wi’ yer tight pants and pert wee arse.  Where I’ve wanted to have ye since I first saw ye that night.”  Shaking her head as if to say “talk less,” Claire whimpered and let his shirt free so she could reach for his belt.  Just as her fingers slipped the leather free from the buckle, he whispered, “Ye’re mine, ye ken that, aye?”

“And you are mine,” she managed, a bit breathless as his thick, sure ring finger sank into her.  

“Mine.  Mine alone, now and forever,” he continued, one hand going for the waistband of her riding pants and rolling them down.  After a breath and rather indelicate removal of her pants, he looked at her like she was sunlight and summertime itself. With a careful flick of her wrist, she finally freed him of his pants and took him in hand. It didn’t strike her to marvel at the fact that he had somehow toed off his shoes and only had to arch and kick to free his legs from his work pants.  All that mattered was the promised stretch of completion, the weight of him over her, a coarse whisper in her ear to make her moan and writhe.

The Lord’s name tumbled in vain from his lips as he looked down between them where they had both been bared.  Her hand moved again and he shook his head, taking her wrist and firmly holding it over her head, pressing it down into the straw “I mean to use ye hard, my Sassenach.”

“Do it,” she goaded him, smirking and curling her fingers around the thumb he had pressed into the palm of her hand. “Do it now, and don’t be gentle.”

Saying it twice was unnecessary, for he reached between them then and guided himself into her an easy, unyielding thrust. The sense memory of each time they had made love flooded back to her, and when he moved again she choked on her own breath and arched up into him.  

Without her needing to ask him to make good on his promise to use her hard, he did.  Thighs falling further open, she took in his frustration and gave him her own.  When he took her mouth, she sank her teeth into his lower lip and carved half-moons into his shoulder with her fingernails.

He possessed her then, body and soul.  He could see it in her eyes, the way her mouth started to form requests he was already well on his way to fulfill (harder, faster, more), but melted into the sound of her moan as he did the very things she was primed to beg him to do.

When he pulled out suddenly, the wet length of his cock against her thigh as he released her wrist, she started to ask what he was doing, but was interrupted by two firm fingers inside of her.  

“Come for me,” he implored roughly, his fingers searching and stroking her with no small amount of skill.  She was just about to unleash something more coarse than anything she had ever said (“then keep fucking me properly”) when Fraser stroked up, the pads of his fingertips beckoning her to rise (up, up, up).  Her eyes blistered with hot tears as she slapped her hands uselessly down into the straw alongside her thighs.  

Arching up towards him (into the sensation, accepting it with a clenched belly and slackened jaw), she wondered absently if they would always be like this.  As his thumb moved in an arc over her, his assault became twofold, and she concluded that fate had surely mapped out an entire eternity of this for them. He leaned into kiss her gasping, agape mouth, and felt the first tremoring promise of an orgasm ripple down her spine and into his hand.

“Claire,” he whispered, stricken at the sight of her only half-naked yet entirely undone and lovely as she could be. He drew everything she gave from her, and she gave it all. “I’ve missed ye so.”

Her insides had given way to contradiction.  A primal urge to beg him to stop.  A contradictory need to let him know he could never stop.  A desire to touch the planes of his shoulders as he coaxed her trembling body to completion.  A premonition that touching him would sear her hand, sending her into an abyss from which she surely could never return.

All she managed was a wilting plea: “please.”

He slid into her just as purposefully as he had at their first joining, but more gently, reverent somehow.  His thumb did not lose pace or rhythm, but she looked up at him almost desperately as he pressed forward, slid back, and started again.  

More.  Never stop.  I love you.

It was the work of four thrusts to finally finish her, and she felt him everywhere.  

( _Rushing out of the pads of her fingers.  Swelling in her belly.  Shimmering up her spine.  Clouding her mind.  Burning behind her eyeballs and blinding her.  Pulsating between her legs. Simmering on her tongue_.)

She clutched him, dragged him down, and sank her teeth into his shoulder to keep from screaming.  In the basest part of himself, he wanted her screams to bound off the walls and make his eardrums ache.  He wanted her nails to trace furrows into his already-scarred back.  

_Mine.  Yours.  Together._

He spilled into her just as her high ebbed into delirious, taffy-thick stupor.  For her part, Claire cupped the back of his head as he finished and her forehead became the home for his as he bowed his head.  Shifting just enough so that he would not crush her, he fell onto her and heaved a contented sigh.  

“Job well done,” she mumbled after a not insignificant time time had passed with the melding of breath and slowing of hearts.  She kissed his temple, tasting salt and letting her eyes close.

“I work hard in yer stables, yer majesty.”

She chuckled, carding her fingers into his damp curls and not bothering to wonder how exactly she would make her way back up to the palace without looking like she had just been rogered six ways to Sunday in a pile of straw.

It could have been years that they laid there, skin drying and arousal fading, but it was closer to half an hour.  

“It is not entirely uncomfortable, this,” she mumbled, head indicating the pile of straw where they were sprawled out together.  

“It’s no’ just good for soakin’ up horse piss, though I suspect ye’ll be pickin’ bits out of your arse for a week.”  She laughed, deciding that she loved him even when he was unbridled of any sense of propriety and allowed himself to be crass.  Reaching between them, he groaned, “Insatiable.”

She hummed, shrugging noncommittally as she took him into her hand.

One could reasonably anticipate that this would be how HM Queen Claire would be caught with the Crown Equerry.  With their pants in a pile on the floor of the stables and the stable boy buried to the hilt inside of the Queen, there would be little for them to do other than deny what was plainly true.  But they would not be caught making love on the stable floor, nor would they be caught cleaning up and kissing before the Queen walked back to the palace for the night.  No one heard the Queen moan or beg, scream, or cry out.  No one heard the Crown Equerry staking his claim to the woman he loved, giving in to a second, lazy, fatigued round as HM Queen Claire wrapped her mouth around him.

No.  This would not be it – this moment, their reconnection, their bodies’ work to release the frustration of separation wrought by nothing more than circumstance.

But as James Fraser curled his fingers into his beloved’s curls, mumbled her name, and let all worldly thoughts fade, neither knew that they had precious few hours of privacy remaining.

Because their cover was about to be spectacularly blown.


	18. Part XVIII: Alarms

##  **Her Royal Highness (H.R.H.)  
****Part XVIII: Alarms**

In the bounded sanctity of dreams, Fraser had free rein.

With his eyes closed and separated from the world, he could touch Claire freely. He could carefully catalog each reaction that his fingertips drew from her at his leisure, drawing each exquisite noise and breath and prickle of goosebumps into full relief.  

( _The diamond-shaped parting of her bee-stung lips, dry from sleep, posed in an invitation._

 _The catch of her breath, one that was always accompanied by her head tilting and her lashes pulsing together like they had a main line to her heartbeat_.)

With his hand low on his belly and creeping lower ( _alone in the dark of his flat consisting of square rooms and artificial light_ ), Jamie could taste her ( _the sea-salt spray of sweat and clean linen tang of a single dusky nipple as it hardened under his lips and a humid bath of his breath_ ).  He could envision her ( _the almost invisible tenting of the bed sheet that just barely covered the other nipple as it beseeched him for a fair and equal treatment_ ).  

Inhaling and then holding his breath, Jamie found that he could recreate for himself the improbable way Claire resituated herself onto her side when she was spent, her cheek pressed against her forearm.  He could feel the wisp of her breath as delicate as dangling wisteria as she grumbled quietly, somnolently, insinuating a single ankle between his legs.

“Ye look beautiful in the mornin’ sun,” he whispered in his mind’s eye as he traced a finger up her arm. Pulsing beneath his hand and led by imagination alone, he found that his fingertips followed an aimless road ( _a hearty green vein at the sweat-tacky inner crease of her elbow_ ). His curiosity led him off a marked path and over the culvert between her arm and body to test the curving munros of her buttocks.

“What is that you think you are doing, Fraser?” she asked into the pillow, those well-trained lips heavy in a pout ( _sated and sleepy, but somehow still aroused_ ).

“Nothing,” he said truthfully.

He had never felt so content to have not a thing to guide him, to limit him.

They had no curfew.

They had no prying eyes to find them.

They had no fear that loose lips would sink ships.

He found himself mesmerized by the silly bits of her – the pulsating, soft heat of her armpit, the mole at the base of her spine ( _one he suspected she barely knew was there_ ) that grew a single jet-black hair, the almost invisible sliver of toenail on her strangely fat small toe.  

He scaled the soft curve of her breast and rappelled its opposing slope like a reckless mountaineer, and carefully walked his fingers across the stable bridge of her well-formed sternum.

“Are ye awake, my Sassenach?” he inquired vaguely, hand slipping beneath the sheet. He hated that she slept in this dizzy waking dream of his.  And so he ghosted across the gentle curve of her belly to the thatch of trimmed hair between her thighs and the heat that resided there like a siren song.  To wake her, to rouse her further.

“I am not even _here_ , Fraser,” she said sleepily, “but you can touch me properly.”

Outside of the dream where his fantasy resided, he wrapped a careful hand around himself. He licked his lips as he tried to transform his calloused fingers and broad palm into her small, delicate touch.  Fingers sinking into bed sheets, he could not recreate the sensation of touching her “ _properly_ ,” the bits as slick as waterweed and thrumming and begging to roar beneath his attentions.

But some things he could recreate with near one hundred percent fidelity.

Her breath.

Her smell.

Her intonation as her pupils went fathomless.

Her femoral pulse hammering away beneath his lips as he kissed her carefully with his chin clumsily ( _on purpose_ ) brushing the heat of her.

Those were things that he had memorized.

Those were things that he could call to mind with the easiness of breathing or blinking, reaching to scratch an itch or drifting off to sleep.

He did not pause to entertain the threat that someday all he would have was the imitation of her.  ( _A memory as fine as could be, but ultimately only the forgery of a masterpiece_.)  Instead, he gripped, tugged, let his mouth fall open as he set a rhythm, knowing that his wanting would always be just this way.

His alarm, though ( _the bloody thing_ ), had a mind of its own.  The twin brass bells chattered and shook. The clock danced across his nightstand and clipped the edge of his water glass with a disconcerting ping, begging to be slapped into silence by his palm.  At the jangling announcement of another day, he groaned, fisted the bed sheets, and tilted his head back.  His fingers ( _the poor substitute for any lover, let alone one as perfect as Claire_ ) released his cock, and he willed himself to think of something ( _anything_ ) to make the bobbing, throbbing ache of arousal subside.

Friday.  It was Friday.  

Inhaling, he ground the heels of his hands into his eyes.  He wondered what kind of pressure it would take to make his eyeballs burst as he expelled the granules of his dream from the pinched pink corners of his eyes.

In ten hours they would be together.  In ten hours they could drift away together.

He rose from bed with a back that ached in the sweet way that brought a river’s torrent of recollection of the previous evening ( _Claire glowing on the hay in the stables, her cheeks pinked and glistening, her fingers trembling as she pressed them over what he knew was a hammering heart_ ).  Colonel James Alexander Malcolm MacKenzie Fraser smiled as he parted his curtains and looked out into the gray of early morning.

Another day.

Those ten hours passed like a century, and when they were reunited and riding north for his cabin from the city, she squeezed his side ( _quick, pulsing, seeking_ ).  She may have screeched her request ( _stop!_ ) into his ear, but it was unheard over the mechanical grumble of the motorcycle’s engine and the fierce whipping of the wind past their helmets.  He didn’t need her to say it, though.  From her touch, he knew to stop, and so they pulled into a dusty lay-by dotted with oily puddles and the orange butts of cigarettes.

“Ye okay then, Sassenach?” he asked once they were at a full stop.

“Never better, just seems a shame to let it all pass by at fifty-five miles per hour.”  She inhaled, wetting her lips (it was an unguarded instinct so easily obliged by her that he felt a tightening in his wame like a fist holding on for dear life). “It is truly a beautiful part of our country.”

She stepped over one of the puddles and hoisted herself up onto a great moss-covered rock, brought herself over a gap to another, and then another until she towered over him.

“I am sure you agree.”

“About?”

“That it is beautiful,” she sighed, a hint of faux exasperation shining through as she unfastened her helmet, tossed it to him without warning, and spread her arms out.  He fastened the helmet carefully to the handlebars, watching her tip her head backwards and inhale.  “It is exhilarating to think of land that no man, no woman has touched.  Where no feet have tread.  Where it is just open except for nature. Our kingdom is untouched.”

His voice was light as he teased, “It’s most certainly _yer_ kingdom, ma’am.”

Humming, Claire tented her eyes with the palm of her hand and looked out at the landscape.  “It is yours, too, Fraser.  Maybe we could live here.”

This time ( _knowing that it was an impossibility - the idea of living here - and knowing that she knew it all the same_ ), his lips released some combination of vowels, and he rose off of the motorbike.  He raked a hand through his hair as he approached her.  “My mam was a fierce nationalist. Didna want a thing to do with the commonwealth.  England was her main problem, no’ so much Wales.  Northern Ireland, weel, that was enough of a mess when she died that I dinna ken what she thought about that. But ye’ll see a white rose bush at the cabin.”

A poem rattled about in her swimming head –

_The rose of all the world is not for me._

_I want for my part_

_Only the little white rose of Scotland._

_That smells sharp and sweet - and_

_Breaks the heart._

– and she inhaled, unsteady.

“That’s her doin’, her way of putting a middle finger up to… weel… yer family I’d suppose.”

Claire turned on the rock, the toes of her camel-colored oxfords collecting moss and smudging with grit in the process.  He was smiling at her, his eyes glowing under impossibly long lashes.  She fisted her small hands on her hips and gave him a smile that threatened to steal his breath. ‘Christ ye’re beautiful,’ he thought to say, his lips poised to set the compliment free. But she laughed, interrupting the sentiment, and said, “I am flattered she thought of us with such frequency.”

“Ye’re no’ concerned that she’d likely no’ approve of ye then?” he asked, voice full of mock reproach.  With a mind of their own, his hands fastened to her hips with his thumbs searching out the soft skin of her belly and fingers gripping her waistband.

“I have made a decision where it comes to all things involving you, Fraser,” she said plainly as she cupped one hand along his jaw and laid the other to rest loosely on his shoulder. “And it is that no one will stand in judgment of us.”

“No one?”

“ _No one_ ,” her echo confirmed as she drew him close. His face was level with her sternum, and she sensed his reaction to the broadness of her statement in the marrow of her bones when his grip tightened.  And with a stunning amount of naieveté for someone so savvy ( _she was no fool, after all_ ), she concluded, “We have some things to figure out, of course, but time is ours right now, Fraser.”

He kissed the center of her chest (a wayward kiss that was not symbolic as it did not land over her heart and one not meant to arouse; it was undesigned and merely the outlet of his affection for her). He sighed when she brought her fingertips to his hairline.

“We’ve an entire kingdom, Claire.”

“ _Aye_ ,” she whispered, the affirmation coming from her like slanted cursive.  “That we do.”

After a not insubstantial bit of time there soaking in the pure silence of the place ( _of each other_ ), they returned to the motorcycle and rode another twenty miles, slowing only for a wayward pair lambs unaccustomed to moving at the pleasure of a human _(even for a queen)_.  At the front of the cabin, Claire took the key from Jamie as he juggled her small bag along and a larger one of his own ( _she had teased him mercilessly about the size of it before they departed, resulting in a pinch to her arse that made her squeak_ ).

The interior smelled like their previous weekend.

Her perfume.  His aftershave.  Burnt sausage and tattie scones.

She stepped inside and turned to Fraser. She looked at him through the open door and quickly shed her clothes.  He dropped their bags on the front stoop and stuttered a step as he made it up the stairs with his trousers slipping to his knees. Freed of clothes, he lifted her, made a perch on the table behind the sofa where a week earlier their bodies had been joined again and again.  

“Take your kingdom, Fraser,” she whispered.  

And then her mouth absorbed his growls, his body joined her fully, and his lips procured unendangered moans that rolled from her belly and through her lips.  

Sixteen miles away Jenny Murray _(wife of Ian Alistair Murray, mother of three - James Fraser Murray and Margaret Ellen Murray and Katherine Mary Murray – and sister of her son’s namesake – in that order, thank ye verra kindly)_ was sitting down for the first uninterrupted portion of her Friday afternoon.  Her lower body ached from carrying an angry, teething Kitty around on her hip all afternoon, and her eyes burned from the ceaseless exhaustion of merely having three children.  Her finger carefully holding the lid on her teapot as she poured, she let herself indulge in the almost-foreign quiet of her home and the lavender that rose in the steam.

And then the phone.

It rang once.

She cursed and considered not answering.

It rang again.

“Fuck,” she hissed, remembering her reluctantly slumbering and teething bairn only separated by twenty-two stairs and a half-closed door from the jangling phone.

It rang a third time.

She leapt up then, hissing a curse as her knee knocked into the side table and sloshed her tea onto its saucer.  

“Murray residence,” she said, her voice still slicing with its curtness despite her low tone.  Her brow furrowed, her fingers curling into the spiral of the cord. She swallowed, knowing the news conveyed to her by the primary school’s headmaster was true even as she asked for clarification. “Maggie brought what to school?”

The answer did not change.

But the world would.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The poem in the text is The Little White Rose by Hugh MacDiarmid. You can take a read through a short biography about him and his other work here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/hugh-macdiarmid. <3


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